


the story of us

by twistedsky



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 23:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3547718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedsky/pseuds/twistedsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The calm before the storm never lasts--the storm always comes eventually. A look at what comes next, post-season two finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All the pairings in the tags are the endgame pairings, and thus there might be some other pairings along the way like Raven/Wick, or others. Some of the pairings are slow burn, but each will get its time in the sun at some point or another.
> 
> The first half of this fic is what I think of as 'journey' fic, and the second half will be lightly based on a silly movie I'm not going to name yet, because I don't want to frustrate anyone who might get excited for it. 
> 
> Warnings(for this chapter) for violence, references to massive amounts of canonical death, and someone handling trauma through not eating very well/insomnia. I'm going to provide warnings for each individual chapter when I come to it, just for clarity's sake.
> 
> I swear that I'm not throwing Jasper under the bus with my choices in this chapter, it's just a very deliberate part of his arc.
> 
> All mistakes are my own.

_**bellamy** _

Everything is calm.

Or at least, it’s relatively calm—they’re all recovering in their own ways, all dealing with their personal traumas, but there are no grounders hidden in the forest, waiting to pounce and kill them, no mountain men capturing, torturing, and killing anymore.

Bellamy is afraid to stop long enough to breathe, to really enjoy the calm, and yet it’s what his people need. They need the calm, they need time to heal, to move forward with their lives.

Bellamy is afraid to believe that things could be okay now. He’s afraid to drop his guard, because whenever he does, everything falls apart.

This is what he _knows_.

The ground is cruel more often than it is kind. It is hard to live, to _survive_ , but that’s what they have to do.

And so, Bellamy keeps himself busy working with Abby and Kane, and he falls into a complicated space between leader and lone wolf.

It’s been seventeen days.

It’s been seventeen days since his hands, his _choice_ helped to kill all of those people to save his own.

It weighs heavily on him, but he struggles to carry it, because it's his burden now. He knows that they did what they had to do, he knows that this was necessary, that his sister, and his people, would all be dead now if they hadn't made that choice.

Cage pushed them to this place, and the Mountain Men were kidnapping and killing grounders long before Sky People fell to the ground—they’d prolonged their lives by stealing the blood from others, murdering for decades in some sort of vampiric attempt at survival, like the dark creatures from books he’d once read.

In the heat of war and battle, when things are all or nothing, you do what you must to protect your people.

After, when there's time to think, you second guess. You try to figure out how things could have gone differently, what you could have done _right_.

This, Bellamy knows quite well.

He wakes up every day, drenched in sweat, the faces of dead children in his mind’s eye, unable to be erased.

This is his burden, and thus he carries it.

He carries it alone.

~~

**_octavia_ **

 Octavia watches as Bellamy takes a group out on a hunt—a mixture of members of the initial group that had landed on earth and members of the Ark who came later—and turns to Lincoln, her current partner on guard duty at this section of Camp Jaha’s boundary.

She opens her mouth to speak, but no words come out.

She rests her thighs around the branch of the tree she and Lincoln have made their perch, since Camp Jaha has only just started making guard towers, and they aren't quite finished yet. Octavia doesn't mind the trees, and neither does Lincoln.

There are so many things to be done, and yet Octavia sits here, watching carefully for signs of an enemy that may never come. She looks around, scanning for intruders.

“Your brother handling himself well,” Lincoln comments, and Octavia looks at him sharply. "He's hiding the darkness inside of him. I doubt most can even tell how tortured he is."

“He’ll be fine,” Octavia says, and she tries to believe it. “We’ll all be fine.” Octavia searches Lincoln's face, and knows that he's tortured too, though he struggles to move forward.

Lincoln simply looks at her, and his eyes pierce right to her soul.

Octavia changes the subject. “Do you think we have anything to fear from Lexa and her people?” Not your people, not our people, not anymore.

“No,” Lincoln says. “Not now, at least. But there are other threats we must guard against.”

Octavia looks down to see the guards for the next shift, and she sighs.

“Are you okay?” Lincoln asks gently, stopping before he descends from their tree.

It’s such a simple question, and far too complicated to answer.

“I don’t know,” she says, and it’s truer than any other answer she could give.

They descend from the tree, and tell the next guards that there’s been nothing of concern, but that Bellamy’s hunting team will return later, and they return to Camp Jaha.

Lincoln reaches out his hand and grasps hers, holding onto it firmly.

Octavia looks at him sideways, and he looks forward.

She loves him.

She may not know what her place is in this new paradigm, as infrastructure and community spring up, but she knows that she's not alone. She has herself, and Lincoln, and Bellamy, and maybe even a few others.

Maybe, she thinks, she can find a true place among them.

~~

**_bellamy_**

The garden, full of medicinal plants and food, is well underway.

Bellamy doesn’t have much of a green thumb, but it pleases him to see people planting and caring for plants. It’s getting colder these days, and they’re headed towards winter, and while they’re struggling to get a hydroponics lab up and running, it’s good to have their bases covered.

He heads to the garden first, searching for Monty, and when he doesn’t find him, he heads to the lab.

Monty spends all his time buried in work these days, a choice Bellamy understands well, as it’s often his own.

They’ve only spoken once about what happened in Mt. Weather, about the choice that the three of them made, because while Bellamy and Clarke’s hands were on the lever, Monty brought them there, and made the entire thing possible.

Monty isn’t handling the guilt well, and while Bellamy has tried to reach out to him, Monty seems to have swallowed himself whole, falling deeply into it, and he's unwilling to pull himself out.

Jasper hasn’t spoken to Monty more than once (so far as Bellamy can tell) since they returned, and _that_ certainly isn’t helping.

Jasper doesn’t speak to Bellamy either, and when Jasper barely manages to look at him, he looks sickened and hateful, and it’s clear that there will be no forgiveness for either Bellamy or Monty, at least not from him.

Jasper couldn't provide the kind of forgiveness Bellamy wants(or is it needs?) even if he wanted to though, and so Bellamy soldiers on.

~~

**_monty_ **

The one time that Bellamy sees Jasper and Monty speak, it ends in violent screaming, with Jasper pressing Monty to the ground, and Monty not bothering to fight back, and Miller grabbing Jasper and pulling him off of Monty.

This is how it starts—

Monty sits down across from Jasper two days into their return, and Jasper doesn’t bother to look up from his food.

Monty looks down at his own food, swallowing his pain.

He can’t apologize—the words _I’m sorry_ were said too many times on the trek back from Mt. Weather, and they’d only seemed to make Jasper angrier, until he’d said that he never wanted to hear Monty say those words again, because he’d never believe them.

This thing he did is heavy inside of him, weighing him down, wrecking him. He can’t sleep, he can barely eat, and he feels empty inside, in ways he's never felt before.

His own words haunt him—what do you expect us to do? Maya had asked. _Die_ , he’d said.

His people hadn’t deserved what the Mountain Men had done to them, the Mountain  Men had instigated that, they’d made the choice to attack, to drill into their bodies out of some entitlement, some sense that the ground was _owed_ to them(this makes Monty wonder, sometimes, if his people share such entitlement). Monty's people had only reacted in defense.

All of that death was _defensive,_ he tells himself.

He doesn’t know if he quite believes it.

He yearns for simplicity, for easy answers, but he knows there are none.

Monty stares down at his food, and wills himself to pick up his utensils, but he doesn’t.

He just stares, and wonders why he’d been foolish enough to sit down across from Jasper.

Monty’s known Jasper his entire life, and Jasper is fuming silently now, and he _hates_ Monty, Monty can feel it.

“We’re not friends,” Jasper says now, and Monty looks up sharply.

“Jasper—“  But Jasper shakes his head and cuts him off.

“No,” Jasper says. “You crossed a line.” His suffering is etched in angry, pained lines on his face—lines that feel like they dig into Monty's heart, spreading the suffering to him. Before, such shared suffering was a consequence of their brotherhood, and now it's simply a consequence of all that they've lost, multiplying the pain instead of halving it as it had before.

“Our friends would have _died_ ,” Monty says, but Jasper stands up then, boiling over with anger and grief, and Monty knows that he’s pushed him too far, even though he’s barely pushed at all. The heavy lifting has already been done, after all.

“My friends _did_ die,” Jasper hisses viciously. “Maya, and all of those people who tried to protect us. For what? So that they could die at our hands?”

Monty sits there, still as a stone, and feels like he’s vibrating inside, like he’s shaking so intensely he’s jumbling himself up inside even worse than he already was. Outwardly, he doesn’t move at all, like he’s frozen to the spot.

“You did that, Monty. _You_ helped them do that. We all know they couldn’t do that without you.”

“I never claimed that they did,” Monty says. “I know what I did.” It bristles inside of him, like he’s swallowed one of those animals—the porcupines. There’s a pain inside of him, pulsing with guilt and regret, and it makes him think of religious studies, of damnation, of karma, and of things he can’t begin to hope for, like salvation.

Jasper turns like he’s going to leave, and Monty’s eyes flutter closed, and a tear escapes. He lifts his hand to rub at his eye, and he wills himself not to cry.

 _Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t—_ and then suddenly he’s being pulled off the bench and he lands on the ground, and his body hisses from the fall. “You knew better,” Jasper screams.

His head is swimming, and he faintly feels a rock underneath it.

“You’d do it again,” Jasper says, and Monty’s head is feverish, and the truth is—no, no, Jasper won’t understand, he _doesn’t_ understand.

Monty tries to sit up, propping himself up on his arms, and shakes his head intensely, then stops when he starts to get dizzy.

“We didn’t know what else to do,” Monty says softly, and Jasper pounces again, punching him then, over and over again.

Monty doesn’t fight back.

He couldn’t explain it even if he wanted to—but his heart is too busy breaking, and he has nothing to fight for, not righteousness, not anger.

He’s just hurt.

Someone rushes over and pulls Jasper off of him.

“What’s going on here?” Bellamy demands, and Monty just lies there, eyes closed, and his eyes only flutter open because he hears arguing.

He sits up carefully and Nathan and Jasper are screaming at each other.

“Everyone, _shut up,_ ” Bellamy growls, and he leans down to help Monty up.

Monty fights the urge to lean against him. He’s fine, he’ll be fine. 

(Maybe this is what he deserves.)

Jasper inches back toward him, a look on his face that Monty’s never seen directed at himself before.

Nathan is staring at Jasper, and stepping forward alongside him, his body between Monty and Jasper.

He must have been the one to get Jasper off of him, Monty thinks. He looks ready to tackle Jasper at any time, if he moves too close, but Jasper just stops.

He catches Monty’s eyes and his own look so cold, so furious. “I hate you,” he says. “And I don’t want you to talk to me ever again.”

Monty flinches, and for a second Monty sees regret flicker across Jasper's face, but then it's gone so quickly, he must have imagined it.

Monty’s lost the closest thing to a family he has left—his first crush(a secret he’s never revealed), his best friend, his _brother._

It’s over now.

(There’s a part of Monty that almost hates Jasper for this, because Jasper has done things too, and Monty has never judged him, never looked at him with such hurt and disappointment. But then again, Monty reminds himself, the blood on Jasper's hands is nothing near the blood Monty's drowning in.)

Monty pulls away from everyone, and goes back to work, avoiding eyes and the hands that reach out for him.

~~

**_bellamy_ **

He finds Monty working in the hydroponics lab.

Raven is huddled over something with him, and they’re arguing gently about what the best course of action is.

Wick is in the corner studying the schematics, and it’s clear that this is _their_ project. Other workers are off on other projects, and Monty had gravitated towards this one.

(Bellamy asked him once why he'd chosen  _this_ project, and Monty had said simply "I want to help something _live_ ," and that is something Bellamy understands.)

Raven’s tone, which Bellamy knows from experience can be biting and vicious, is kind and soft, even as she disagrees with Monty, which isn’t exactly her specialty.

Bellamy thinks, though he’s never asked, that Wick and Raven had chosen to get on board with this particular project because they’d wanted to keep an eye on Monty, because of course there are a million other things they could be doing. Bellamy's seen Raven with Jasper too, and he thinks she's doing the same for him.

There's a compassion in Raven that scares Bellamy. He much prefers when she's sarcastic and competitive(it's easier to pretend that way, that he doesn't feel anything at all).

Monty looks up from what he’s doing and makes eye contact with Bellamy, not even looking hopeful this time, and Bellamy shakes his head slightly.

Raven follows Monty’s gaze and looks over to see Bellamy.

“To do what we owe your esteemed presence?” Raven asks dryly, and Bellamy fights against a smile.

“I just wanted to check in,” he says, lying easily. “How’s it going?”

“How much do you want to know?” Wick asks. “Because the more specific we get, the more your eyes are going to glaze over.”

“Shut up, Kyle,” Raven says, rolling her eyes and smiling slightly. “He’s right though.” Bellamy wonders when they got onto a first name basis, because Bellamy didn’t even _know_ that was his name, but that’s a thought for another day, and certainly not his business(though he might get in a teasing jab later, just because he can).

“Kane and Abby are looking for a total update on all the projects going on around the camp,” Bellamy says, and this much is true.

“Of course they are,” Raven says, sighing slightly. “It’s actually going really well. We should be done sometime tomorrow or the next day.”

“Really?” Bellamy asks, surprised. “I thought you had a lot more work to do,” his tone is a bit more suspicious now.

Raven smiles innocently, but she’s not very good at that, and so she just looks sneaky. “You never know when something is going to go wrong. Things happened to go right, and so we’re ahead of schedule.” She'd added in buffer time, that means, just to keep the pressure off of them. Bellamy doesn't blame her, because the constant tension of war had taken its toll on all of them.

“Good,” Bellamy says. “We need to get everything going as soon as possible. According to Lincoln, the winters are bitterly cold, even though they start a little late.”

Bellamy is still amazed by that—the ground has _seasons_ , a concept he’d never quite understood on the Ark, where everything was so carefully controlled, so that people wouldn't die.

Well, Bellamy thinks, so that _more_ people wouldn't have died, that is. 

Bellamy tries not to think about the resentment and hatred he'd once felt for the Ark. It's better to move forward, and to let go of tension that can only get in the way of them building new lives on the ground. He hasn't forgotten though, and he doubts he'd ever be able to, even if he wanted to.

They’re trying to start over, and build new lives for themselves. The only way they can do that is if they learn from their past mistakes and let go of what didn’t work, and avoid what poisoned their lives in the sky.

Bellamy wonders if the others ever miss space, if they miss looking out of a window and seeing the earth so far away, and so many stars around them, always.

Bellamy doesn’t—there’s almost something beautiful about looking up at the sky, and having it feel so far away. The earth is dangerous, but free.

He doesn’t feel claustrophobic, like the world is constantly closing in on him.

There’s something comforting about that.

“I think we need a break,” Raven says, sighing and wiping sweat off her forehead with the sleeve of her shirt.

“Really?” Wick says, lifting an eyebrow.

“Get your mind out of the gutter, not that kind of break,” Raven rolls her eyes, and looks to Monty.

“Go on without me,” Monty says. “I’m not really hungry.”

Raven narrows her eyes at him. “I'll bring you back something, and you’ll eat it.” It's clear that Monty doesn't have much of a choice in that.

"I'm not a child," Monty says, and Raven nods her head.

Softly, she says, "I know." _I'm just worried about you_ is unspoken, and Monty smiles slightly.

Raven turns her head to face Bellamy, who shakes his head. “Later,” he says.

Raven shrugs, and beckons at Wick, who wanders over, and they leave together.

Bellamy finds a bench and lies down on the seat, groaning as his back straightens out, and he tries to relax his muscles.

His eyes close, and for a moment he just breathes in and out deeply, searching for a simple moment of peace and quiet.

Monty, perceptive as he is, doesn’t talk, just works quietly while Bellamy relaxes.

The dorms and tents are loud and busy pretty much all the time, and while Bellamy has gotten used to sleeping in difficult situations, there’s nothing quite like just _resting._

“We aren’t going to find any sign of her,” Bellamy says finally, wiling his muscles not to tense up again. “She’s long gone.”

“Maybe she’ll come back,” Monty says. “Maybe—“

“Maybe a lot of things, Monty,” Bellamy doesn’t mention her name, and neither does Monty, because of some unspoken decision not to. 

Bellamy looks for any sign that Clarke is anywhere in the vicinity whenever he goes out, just in case she’s in any way tempted to come back, but there’s nothing to be found.

He’s been tracking with Lincoln lately, and the more he learns, the more he realizes the truth.

She’s not here.

And she’s probably not coming back.

“I’m not giving up,” Bellamy says then, and he means it. “But at the end of the day, she’s only going to come back when she wants to.”

It has to be _when_ , he thinks. Not if.

Not if.

~~

**_octavia_ **

There’s some sort of commotion, but it’s not an attacking army, so Octavia’s not entirely sure she cares.

Raven and Monty are whispering intensely at each other, though they don’t seem angry so much as they seem excited, or maybe nervous, or maybe—well, she doesn’t care.

“Don’t you have something to do?” Octavia asks, and they stop whispering and turn to her in unison.

“No,” Raven says sharply, then she turns back to face Monty, who is still looking at Octavia.

“We already finished the hydroponics lab,” Monty explains. “And there are much more important things to worry about right now.” Monty is animated, almost excited for a moment, a far cry from the deflated, muted version of himself Octavia has had trouble getting used to.

“What’s going on?” Bellamy walks in then, and he’s her big brother, she can read him easily. “What’s wrong?”

Bellamy hesitates. “We received a message,” he says, like he’s not entirely sure it’s true that they _actually_ received a message.

“A message?” Octavia frowns. “What kind of message?”

Bellamy holds out something that looks like a heavy sort of paper, maybe a cloth-like material.

Octavia grabs it, looking down at the page.

“It’s a map,” Raven supplies.

“I can see that, thanks,” Octavia says. “There are directions here to this location. It’s signed—Jaha,” Octavia says in surprise. “I haven’t thought of him in a while.”

“Most people had assumed he’d died,” Bellamy says. “But he’s alive, and he sent us this so that we would go. Some flying robot thing—“

“A drone,” Monty says helpfully.

“A drone came and dropped the canister with the map in it right into our laps.” Bellamy says, and he sounds suspicious, like he doesn’t quite trust it.

Octavia looks down at the map in her hands and wonders, for a moment, if this could be what they all need.

This could be their new home. This could be a fresh start, and a new chance at life far, far away from all this tragedy and suffering.

“We have to go,” Octavia declares.

This is what she’s been hoping for. She’s sure of it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clarke undergoes a bit of an emotional journey in this chapter. The next chapter goes back to Camp Jaha and its residents, and should be up sometime this weekend.
> 
> Warnings for some emotional angst, and some references to canonical death and murder. All mistakes are my own.
> 
> I was so incredibly stunned by all of the people who subscribed(or kudos'd) to this story! I hope you enjoy it! Not all of the chapters will be so emotionally heavy, though I'm a bit of a sucker for that sort of thing.

_**clarke** _

She walks around in a haze.

Clarke’s not entirely sure where she’s going, or what she wants, but she knows she couldn’t stay, and she can’t go back.

She can’t see their faces, can’t face them every day, knowing what she’s done.

She knows why she did it, knows that in that bright, terrifying moment, she honestly couldn’t figure out another option, but that doesn’t help. (Letting her people die was never an option.)

Even now, she tries to figure it out, to think of an alternative, but every plan reaches a dead end.

She struggles to accept the reality of the situation, but all she has is time to think, to go over every single second of everything that’s happened since she reached the ground, and since her life turned upside down. It feels like entire lifetimes had passed since she’d been locked up, and spent every waking moment seething with anger at Wells, drawing, or grieving for her father.

She closes her eyes, and tries to reach in her mind for the Clarke she’d once been, but she can’t seem to remember what that feels like.

The Clarke from before knew pain, but nothing compared to this.

Her mind can’t help but try to tally the losses, to write her sins out in stark terms, to feel the weight of it all at once, though she’s crushed beneath it.

In the first hours after she leaves Camp Jaha, not even allowing herself to enter its gates, she finds food, and then a place to sleep.

Tomorrow, she decides, she’ll figure out what comes next.

~~

She looks to the past for answers.

It’s a painful walk back to the dropship—not physically, but emotionally.

The earth is already stained with her regrets, and she’s only been here for a short while.

She sees a mess of flowers that look familiar, and she realizes that Wells had once pointed to them in a book excitedly, telling her that it was too bad that they’d never have the chance to see them in real life, because there were no seeds for them on the Ark. She leans down and chooses a small bunch of them and reaches her hands into the earth and pulls them back out, cupping the plant and its roots in a small patch of mud and dirt.

She keeps walking like that, holding her flowers carefully, until she reaches her destination.

She kneels on the ground next the grave, and looks up at the sky, breathing in deeply to find the strength to look back down at the ground.

She takes the plant she’d scooped up, roots and mud and all, and digs a hole for it.

There are rows of graves, but she knows who this one belongs to.

“Hey, Wells,” Clarke murmurs softly.

It feels like it’s been an eternity since they’d buried him. It would have been easier if he were still here, if he’d been here for all of it.

“You would have known the right thing to do,” Clarke says—she sighs, shakes her head. “That’s not fair. I know that.”

That’s not why she misses him, not really.

She puts the flowers into the hole, and pushes the dirt around and over it, feeling a bit like a parent tucking a child into bed, like her own mother and father used to do for her.

“I’m glad you didn’t die with me hating you, because you didn’t deserve that.”

Clarke is grateful for small kindnesses, though she wants to scream that she deserved more time, that he deserved more time, that they just deserved _more._

She curls up on the ground, tucking her knees into her chest and for the first time in a long while, she lets herself sob uncontrollably.

She cries until her eyes burn, and her throat feels raw and hoarse.

“I don’t even know who I am anymore,” Clarke says, her voice catching on the words.

~~

She faces the place where it started—where the dropship fell to the ground, and everything spiraled wildly out of control. It fell apart so quickly(or maybe it was never together enough to begin with, maybe a mismatched group of delinquent teens never stood a chance).

People died here. Some of them were her friends, and others she burned to protect her own.

She’s making a habit of burning hundreds of people to death, and she’s just so _tired_.

“I did what I had to do,” she says softly. _I’m a monster_ , she wants to say.

She feels it deep in her bones. Sometimes you need a monster to do the dirty work, to do the worst of all things for the better of everyone.

She closes her eyes and thinks of Finn then despite herself.

She followed through, she saved her people, and no matter what happened along the way, she got the job done.

She opens them, and says goodbye to this place for the last time.

~~

She takes a dip in a nearby watering hole—the one she’d once walked through with Finn. It seems like a distant memory at first, but now it’s clawing its way back to the surface.

She can’t help but think of him while she cleans her body, or when she squats down in the water and lets it wash over her.

She’s not sure what comes next, but there has to be something. She has to go _somewhere_.

She dips her head underneath the water, and comes back up a little later than she should, but she’s fine, she’s breathing.

Fine, she supposes, is relative.

She doesn’t feel cleansed, doesn’t feel like she’s a new person.

She just feels cold, and she’s shivering now, so she lifts herself out of the water, and continues on her way.

~~

She visits the old bunker Finn had found, and wanders through picking up things she thinks might be useful.

She studiously avoids looking at the couch they’d had sex on, and simply grabs a comfortable, but large backpack, and starts packing things away.

Winter is coming, and she needs to be practical.

She’d probably be better off holing up somewhere, but the idea of staying in a place so full of memories is too painful to contemplate.

She needs to move on, but doesn’t know how.

She wants to make big proclamations, to say she’ll never kill again. The truth is that she wants to avoid it at all costs, that she wishes she could never speak to another person again and just live alone and free, and safe from such choices.

The truth is, however, that she’s not built for it.

It’s only been four days, and she spends so much time in her mind just struggling to make sense of things that she needs a distraction.

She craves people and noises beyond the rustling of the wind and the howling of animals.

Eventually, she settles down on the couch and curls up in a ball and hopes for sleep. The couch smells old and dusty, and she’s grateful for it.

(She wakes up screaming and crying, and she almost can’t breathe at first. She counts slowly and carefully to calm down her thoughts and her breathing.)

~~

The arrow misses her by only an inch, but she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t panic. She pulls out her gun and turns to aim it at her attacker, ready to fire, “I’m surprised to see you alive,” Indra says, almost sounding impressed.

“Why?” Clarke asks. She tries to project perfect confidence, _fearlessness_ , but doesn’t quite manage to stop bitterness from seeping into her tone, though she tries to.

It isn’t Indra’s fault, after all, that Lexa chose to make a deal with the Mountain Men.

The truth, though she doesn’t like it, is that Lexa did what she had to in order to protect her people, and she wasn’t short-sighted about it. Clarke understands it, but she hates it too.

(It was her choice to kill the Mountain Men. _Her_ choice. But a part of her holds onto bitterness at the fact that it didn’t have to be like that, if only Lexa had trusted in her, and in their plan. Then again, why should she have?)

“You don’t seem like the sort of person who gives up,” Indra says lightly. “Why are you here? Hoping that the Commander might change her mind?”

“No,” Clarke says sharply. “I don’t give up. I don’t need anything from Lexa. I did what I had to.” These words are not full of bitterness, they’re full of surety. Clarke has protected her people, and thus she doesn’t need Lexa’s help. Indra’s eyes widen, and Clarke thinks she understands.

“I am constantly underestimating your people,” Indra says, and she almost sounds impressed, or maybe it’s fear. Maybe those things are too intertwined to possibly tell the difference.

Indra doesn’t look afraid of much of anything. Clarke has seen her fight, and she’s _impressive_.

“You aren’t the only one,” Clarke replies, and Indra lifts an eyebrow.

“Well, Clarke Griffin of the Sky People—“ Indra hesitates. “Are you searching for something?”

“Just myself,” Clarke says wryly, almost bitterly. “I wasn’t looking for Lexa, or your people. I’ll head in a different direction now.”

“Clarke—“ Indra says as Clarke starts to turn away. Clarke turns back, keeps her face impassive, and tries to keep her emotions in check. “I’m not sure what happened in the Mountain,” she says. “But if you saved your people,” Clarke nods slightly. “Then you have served them well.”

Clarke stands there, and she wonders what to say. “Is—“Clarke hesitates. “Is Lexa nearby?”

“Yes,” Indra says. “Do you wish to see her?”

Clarke opens her mouth, waiting for an answer to spill out, and none does.

Indra simply stands there quietly, and Clarke wonders if she’s judging her.

This is not a simple question, and Clarke’s not even sure what she could possibly get out of the interaction.

She could ask how Lexa handles the stress of all of her people’s lives in her hands, but Clarke already knows the answer to that.

Clarke still skirts the line in her mind, barely able to determine what’s worth the risk, and what’s not anymore.

Clarke needs to stop dwelling on this, because the events have already unfolded, and she can’t go back and change any of them, even if she wants to.

Her hesitation is what decides things for her, because Lexa and two of her guards step through the trees, and there’s no longer a decision to make.

~~

Clarke is not in love with Lexa.

She feels—she felt—she started to feel something, maybe, and one day maybe she could have, but she’d still been healing, still hadn’t been _ready_.

Now, she carries even more weight upon her shoulders, and she’s not sure she’s capable of love, of letting someone in again. In her experience, that level of intimacy ends in death and devastation, and Clarke can’t handle anymore of either of those.

Lexa’s warriors stand far enough away that there’s the illusion of privacy, but close enough that they can probably hear anything that Lexa and Clarke might say.

Lexa isn’t weak, Clarke reminds herself. Lexa doesn’t look happy to see her, or pained by the guilt she may or may not feel(Lexa is capable of guilt, Clarke knows, but she denies it so fluidly, so easily that it’s hard to remember that it was there at all, and Clarke doesn’t know if Lexa could feel guilt for the decision she’d made).

Clarke fights to keep her face still, emotionless, but she gives up the attempt at a façade and simply looks at Lexa with what she feels.

This may be weakness, but Clarke has earned her suffering, and she won’t deny it for the sake of pretending to feel nothing at all. For what, she thinks?

“You survived,” Lexa says simply.

“My people survived,” Clarke practically screeches out. _No thanks to you_.

“Good,” Lexa says, and there’s a flicker of something on her face that looks like relief, and Clarke wants to scream at her.

Lexa doesn’t get to feel relief for the fact that they somehow managed to survive. She doesn’t deserve that.

“If your people go anywhere near my people,” Clarke says then, “I will hunt you down and kill you myself.”

Maybe there could have been a chance at trade one day, or shared their wisdom and technology with one another, but now Clarke can only remember how fragile their alliance was, and how it fell apart so easily, even though Clarke had lied, killed, and scraped out pieces of her soul to try to keep it together.

“Clarke—“ Lexa starts to say, but then she pauses, watching Clarke carefully, thoughtfully.

“What?” Clarke tries to temper her rage, and barely manages to get it under control.

“Come to Polis,” Lexa says gently. “Not for me, but for you. Come see something beautiful, and find your way again.”

“I can barely stand here,” Clarke says. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“That’s up to you,” Lexa tells her, and Clarke wants to scream at her again, but she holds it back, she won’t make a scene, _not here_.

Not now.

“No,” Clarke says, and she turns to leave.

“If you change your mind,” Lexa calls out. “We leave at first light. Our camp is just to the east of here.”

 _I don’t care_ , she wants to yell back, but she doesn’t.

She’s tempted.

But she won’t do it.

What good could come of that?

~~

She starts off in the opposite direction, telling herself that she’ll figure out where she’s going, figure out what she needs or wants to do.

She feels lost and aimless and desperate for a sign, for a _purpose_.

Lexa offered her temporary direction.

She can’t say yes, but—she leans against a tree, trying to breathe, trying to get the courage or the strength to keep going. Her anger had flamed out so quickly, and now she can see clearly again.

Stubbornly walking through the forest in any goddamn direction isn’t going to get her anywhere—this would all be so much easier with her people, her _friends_.

Harder, too, she realizes. She forces the thought from her head, and focuses on the here and now.

She returns to Lexa’s camp. Indra sees her first, and nods.

Clarke nods back.

For now, she’s taking things one day at a time.

~~

She walks side-by-side with Lexa, despite the fact that she could always travel behind the group, or she could venture off to either side, but the other Grounders still don’t much like her, or what she represents, and now their alliance is gone.

They speak little, and while on occasion Lexa gives her an update about their journey, Clarke just mutters or shrugs.

Lexa doesn’t apologize, and Clarke doesn’t expect her to.

The walk isn’t too long—a full day’s journey at their speed, but Clarke is used to walking now. The ground has worked muscles in her body that she previously hadn’t needed, and now this is her reality.

Most of Lexa’s army seems to have returned to doing whatever they do when there’s not an impending war to worry about, at least that’s what Clarke gleans from the sporadic bits of conversation she understands from Lexa’s small group of warriors.

Clarke doesn’t unload her sins or worries or stresses onto Lexa, and Lexa doesn’t ask, and so they walk in silence.

Clarke wonders if Lexa hopes for absolution, or if she even cares, but she doesn’t ask.

Actually, that’s wrong, she doesn’t want to, but she does.

“Do you ever hope for forgiveness?” Clarke asks softly.

Clarke doesn’t turn her head to look at Lexa, and thus can’t see her face, and has no idea what kind of reaction she’s having.

“I’m not concerned with forgiveness, Clarke,” Lexa says. “I’m concerned with survival. There are far more important things than my soul—and my people are better served with a leader who fights for them, not her own needs.”

This makes sense, and there are no surprises, but Clarke is somehow still disappointed.

She’s looking for an answer to a question she hasn’t quite figured out how to pose.

~~

She doesn’t get her answer.

They arrive in Polis, and she sees a city overrun by nature—but unlike so much of the ground that she’s seen so far, she sees a _city_ beneath it all.

She sees that Lexa’s people have built into and on top of the ruins of civilization, and it’s stunningly complex.

She’s not surprised exactly, she’s _impressed_.

She knows her own people will likely manage such things with time, and for a brief moment she feels a pang in her heart, because she should be there to help them.

The next morning, she’s even more impressed, and that pang in her heart turns into a full-blown throbbing pain.

She’s made the right choice, she reminds herself(it’s hard to believe that sometimes when she’s completely alone, or she turns her head to find a face that she knows isn’t there—when she expects to hear Raven make a snappy comment, see Bellamy look at her and understand what she’s thinking without words, or even sit in companionable silence with Lincoln).

For the next day, Lexa shows her around, showing Clarke what _her_ people are capable of.

She wonders if the Mountain Men would have ever realized how foolish they were to so easily underestimate the Grounders—call them savages, with little understanding of what they were capable of(and little understanding of how little _they_ themselves had been capable of).

Early in the evening, Lexa tells her that they have a stop to make early the next morning, and thus she should head to sleep early, if possible. Clarke hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since she landed on the ground, but she’ll try anyway.

“Where are we going?” Clarke inquires, but Lexa simply shrugs away her question.

~~

It’s beautiful.

Clarke is used to sleeplessness, to fear and hunger and the cold, but she forgets all of their lingering effects in this moment.

She’s seen sunrises and sunsets before, but nothing like this—where the sun meets the ocean, just as it makes its way into the sky—this is an entirely new set of colors. The ocean itself is new to her too. This is too overwhelming, too much to process, and an incredible surge of emotion overcomes her.

She wishes she could capture this somehow, but even if she had the materials, she couldn’t.

She drinks it in, knowing that at any moment, the sun will break out into the open sky, and it’ll simply be another day.

“You’ve seen what we’ve built, and what we have to protect. And now you’ve seen the natural wonders,” Lexa says softly, and for a moment Clarke lets go of her tension, and just reaches out her hand and takes Lexa’s.

Just for a moment, just as a—just as someone who _understands_.

“I can’t tell you to return to your people,” Lexa acknowledges. “Maybe you will eventually. There are many places to see in the meantime—places with giant remnants of past places, places where nature has taken over completely. Beautiful places, Clarke.”

As she stares at the sunrise, a slow, stunning process, she lets herself think of her friends without fighting herself. She doesn’t push away the thought of them, or feel only stinging regret.

They’ll see sunrises and sunsets, but likely never at the edge of the ocean, where the sea battles land, and the colors are so vibrant her eyes almost hurt.

Eventually, one day, she might return to them, she thinks.

Maybe one day.

For now she simply tries to drink it in, and to figure out how she’d explain the colors to Raven or Monty, or the supreme sense of peace and wonder to Bellamy.

“I’m glad I was able to share this with you,” Lexa tells her, and her voice cracks slightly, and Clarke can hear the barely concealed emotion underneath.

It would be easy for Clarke to skewer her for this, but she doesn’t. She reaches for kindness instead, something she hasn’t had much cause to exercise lately. “Me too,” Clarke admits. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome, Clarke of the Sky People,” Lexa says.

Clarke squeezes Lexa’s hand one last time, then pulls her own away, and clasps her hands together.

She watches the horizon as the sun inches up beyond the water, and the sky fades to a clear blue.

The sea smells different than she’d expected, nothing like the rivers and streams she’s come across before this.

She closes her eyes, and lets herself cry again, this time much differently than the others—she cries silently, not out of shame, and Lexa doesn’t move to comfort her.

It’s cathartic, almost, and when she’s done, her head aches, but it’s clear too.

Her heart isn’t clear—it’s still heavy, but she feels _hope_ for the first time in days, since she stood outside of Mt. Weather and watched Lexa’s army walk away.

~~

One of Lexa’s warriors hands her the last of her supplies, and Clarke nods her thanks.

“You don’t have to leave,” Lexa says, standing nearby.

“I do,” Clarke knows this.               

She’s taken little time to see the beauty beyond the horrors on the ground, and now that she has, she’s trying to find some sort of peace in it.

She still can’t close her eyes without thinking of all the lives she took, and she hasn’t found absolution, or salvation, or anything of the sort, and she hasn’t found new purpose, but she has inspiration now.

“Will you return to your people?” Lexa asks.

“Eventually,” Clarke says, looking at her horse, and the supplies she’s accumulated. “Maybe, one day.”

Her reasons for leaving are still valid, still in stark red in her mind’s eye, written in blood.

Clarke closes the distance between herself and Lexa, and kisses her chastely—there’s no hint of tension anymore, it’s a kiss that means _thank you_ , even as it means goodbye.

“May we meet again,” Lexa says, and Clarke nods.

She’s not sure she hopes for that. For now, Clarke just hopes she can hold onto this one, bright spot of clarity for as long as possible.

Clarke mounts the house, and spares one last look at Polis, and reminds herself that tomorrow is another day, and she heads off in a different direction than the one she’d come.

Clarke wants to be free for a while, to simply be herself, and figure out if she can live with her sins(she hasn’t quite determined the answer to that question yet, but she’ll get there).

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for references to loss, dissociation, depression, and canonical awfulness.
> 
> All mistakes are my own.

_**nathan** _

They’re yelling again. The news of the map from Jaha—complete with directions and a red line from Camp Jaha to wherever the hell he and the others went—spreads through the camp like wildfire before Chancellor Griffin and Kane can even determine whether or not it should be kept secret.

Now, everyone’s concerned with what comes next _. Should we go, should we stay, should we find some sort of compromise?_

Nathan doesn’t really care what they decide, because he knows that  _someone_  will follow the map to its destination, no matter what the ‘leaders’ decide.

People are obstinate that way—and they’re also just jackasses, which is even more important. People will do what they want, and enough people are dissatisfied with everything that’s happened on the ground to want to find a new home, which Jaha seems to be claiming he’s found.

Nathan hasn’t forgotten the days of ‘whatever the hell we want’ and how easy it is to stir a crowd toward chaos and destruction.

(Nathan thinks it would be funny if Jaha didn’t actually find anything, and he’s just sending them all on some sort of pranky scavenger hunt, but that’s just him. Jaha didn’t exactly send a  _note_ , but it’s not that hard to figure out that a map is just an invitation, so whatever.)

“We’ve already started building a home here,” the Chancellor argues, and she has a point. Nathan doesn’t know if it’s a home worth fighting for, but it’s all they have.

They’re having a town hall-style meeting, and it’s going relatively well, though people keep trying to scream over each other. Most of the crowd is sitting on the ground, or on random things they’d brought so that they wouldn’t have to, though a few are standing off to the side and in the back.

At the front of the crowd, Bellamy and Kane stand on either side of Abby, who is perched uncomfortably on an overturned bucket.

Cage Wallace had torn so viciously into Abby Griffin, hoping to scare her daughter into submission, that she’s had the hardest time recovering from bone marrow ‘donation.’

A dark rage threatens to consume Nathan when he thinks of what his friends had undergone, especially when he thinks of those they'd lost.

Nathan struggles to neutralize the anger, just as he always does when he sees his friends who had been medically violated by the Mountain Men wince in pain, or gently massage the areas around where the bone marrow had been taken from them, though it’s been happening less and less with time.

Of his friends, Harper got the worst of it, but she’d been holed up in bed for the better part of two weeks after they gotten back. Monty and Nathan had been there with her, because the three of them had stayed together for all of their checkups. Between the medicines they’d swiped from Mt. Weather and her youthful resilience, she’ll be fine, Jackson had said. Harper’s strong, and stubborn, and Nathan believes that.

Most of his friends who underwent the procedure try to hide their scars, pretending that all of this didn’t happen to them—except Raven, who simply shrugs and says  _I survived._

Nathan’s attention is driven back to the crowd when someone calls out, “We can make our own decisions!” And Bellamy gives a sharp look to whoever it is.

“In order to survive, we need to stick together,” Bellamy yells back.

“We can’t just ignore his message,” Kane says now.

Nathan loses interest in the argument and looks through the crowd for something to catch his interest—Lincoln and Octavia are talking to each other at the edge of the crowd, Raven has an impatient look on her face, and Harper’s staring at Monty again.

Nathan thinks Harper has a _thing_ for Monty, and it unsettles him slightly. When they were in Mt. Weather, they were a team, and now they’re not. Jasper won’t talk to Monty, Maya’s dead, and now something is bubbling under the surface with Monty and Harper, and while he wants to be happy for them, he’s—he’s frustrated, that’s all.

It’s not big and overwhelming exactly, but they have a bond forged from shared experiences. Monty’s hugging his arms around himself and bobbing up and down slightly, like he’s cold, but he’s too concerned with being _here_ to go and find warmth.

Monty had told him that he always feels cold these days, like he just can’t seem to get any warmth into his bones. It was one of the few things he’d said to Nathan, because he barely speaks to anyone these days.

Monty speaks to Bellamy obviously, and Raven and Wick are always there, poking and prodding at him, and then there’s Harper and Nathan himself—that’s about it, and Nathan would know.

He’s beginning to get the feeling that he stares too much, and so he forces his gaze away like he always does, and shakes his head.

He needs a chance of pace.

When the town hall meeting ends in compromise—Bellamy’s leading a team of people to scout ahead and relay information back, and _then_ they’ll make an informed decision(which seems like the obvious conclusion, and Nathan doesn’t really get why it took them two and a half hours to figure that out?)—Nathan speeds over to Bellamy to volunteer.

~~

Nathan knows that it’s all been settled, but he’s still curious about something.

“Why are you going? It’s not like you have to.” Bellamy’s a leader here—he has a purpose, and he fulfills it well, from what Nathan’s seen. He always does.

“I don’t,” Bellamy says. “I want to protect my people, to make sure that they’re safe, and the best way to do that is to check on this myself.”

“What if something happens while you’re gone?” There’s always the chance something will go terribly wrong, because this is the ground, and that’s to be expected.

Bellamy takes a moment. “I—“ he sounds torn, his voice raw with emotion. “I hope that doesn’t happen, but if it does, then they have Kane and Abby, and everyone else. I’m the best option for this.”

“Why?” Bellamy is his friend, and Nathan’s seen him be willing to do things he doesn’t necessarily want to do too many times before, and so he just wants to make _sure_.

“Because I won’t give up,” Bellamy says simply. “I’m not going to give up halfway there and wander back with my tail between my legs—“

“You don’t have a tail,” Nathan says to lighten the mood, and Bellamy rolls his eyes.

 “I’m going to do what’s best for all of us,” Bellamy says firmly, and Nathan believes that.

Nathan gives Bellamy a careful look. “I’m going to go with you,” he says.

Bellamy nods, and smiles slightly. “Glad to hear it,” he says, and Nathan can’t help but smile back.

~~

**_bellamy_ **

The team comes together quickly, even though Abby and Kane insist that they should take more care with the selection process.

Bellamy _knows_ most of these people. He knows what they’re capable of, and that’s what speaks to him when he says yes and no to those who come to him.

He’s allowed to take a team of twelve, and they need to get going quickly, because while Camp Jaha can close in on itself, and its mass, weather-resistant housing should be done in a matter of days(Bellamy mentally thanks the person who listened when Lincoln insisted that _that_ was a priority), if they’re walking along, they could get caught in any kind of rain or snowstorm.

Bellamy’s walking across camp to find Abby when Octavia walks up beside him.

“We’re going,” Octavia tells him without preamble, and the other part of the ‘we’ must mean Lincoln, Bellamy determines.

Lincoln would be an invaluable asset, because he’s the only one who knows anything about that area of the ground, and Bellamy knows enough about maps to know that they don’t necessarily tell the full story.

And if Lincoln goes, Octavia goes.

Bellamy likes to have his sister by his side when he can, and she can clearly take care of herself, so it’s easy enough to say yes.

Octavia smiles, and for a moment she seems genuinely happy.

“Come here,” Bellamy says softly, stopping and pulling his little sister into his arms for a hug. She’s strong, and she’s smart, but she’s still his sister, still his responsibility.

He’d kill for her, and he has.

He’d do it all again.

Octavia rests her head against his chest, and Bellamy rubs her back.

Bellamy rarely feels more at peace than when his sister is smiling as brightly at him as she is now.

“I heard Raven wants to come,” Octavia says. “Is she up for it?”

“If she says she is, then she is,” Bellamy replies.

“She’s not very good at being weak or vulnerable,” Octavia points out. “Sometimes we need other people to see our limits, because we’re willing to destroy ourselves in the pursuit of our goals.”

Inexplicably, he thinks of Clarke, and pushes away the thought immediately. “I’ll talk to her,” he says. “She knows her limits.”

Octavia laughs and shakes her head. “No, she doesn’t.”  She gives Bellamy a careful look. “And she’s not the only one.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bellamy says.

“You, big brother,” Octavia says with a sigh. “But don’t worry,” she pats her shoulder where her sword is sheathed on her back. “I’ve got your back.”

“I know you do,” he says, and he does. “Hey, O—“ he calls when she starts to wander away.

She looks back at him over her shoulder. “Yeah?”

“I love you,” he says, and her face softens.

“I love you too, Bell.”

~~

**_nathan_ **

When he was a kid, he’d spent a lot of time feeling trapped by everything in life.

There was the usual emotional outburst when he realized he’d never leave the Ark, at least not alive, but that was a common experience among the children of the Ark.

There was a sense for everyone, eventually, that there was no escape. For a lot of people, that’s when the claustrophobia would set in, and they’d go through a phase full of emotionally-charged outbursts—hopefully nothing too bad, of course, because those who crossed the line often ended up in the Skybox, destined to die because they’d wanted to live too much.

For Nathan Miller, everything changed soon after his mother died.

His father had tried to comfort him, tried to explain mortality in that way that children never quite understand.

He was nine when it happened, and from then on, he never felt quite the same.

Nathan and his father never quite managed to connect on the level that Nathan craved, though Nathan never felt unloved.

He felt lonely though, sometimes.

The first time he stole something, it was a small hair clip from the little girl who lived two homes down, and he’d secreted it back to her after he saw her crying over it, and no one was ever the wiser.

He never stole from anyone who would care again, even if he hated them.

Even as a child, he’d had the Ark’s rules drilled into his mind, and his father never let him forget them(never out of malice, but out of love).

People who care realize that their things are missing, and in turn he’d likely get caught, and so he stuck to small, unnoticeable things, of which there were very few.

The world of the Ark was too small, a closed ecosystem that could only carry on with what it was and what it could make out of that, for Nathan to be able to get away with such things for long.

Nathan’s not entirely sure why he kept doing it—it felt compulsive, like he had to, though he could at least be smart about it. He kept it as infrequent as possible, but it sometimes burned inside of him, and he couldn’t help but keep going, keep pushing himself. He could get himself to return things soon after, which could often be just as thrilling, if not more.

He’d been searching for something; trying to fill up some space in his heart that he hadn’t fully understood was empty.

Things are different now on the ground—his father loves him, and knows how to say it, and for the first time Nathan truly _feels_ it. He has friends who mean something to him, friends that are more like family. He’d do anything for them.

He has a home, and freedom, and when he looks around, he sees _life_ instead of a cage.

When he tells his dad he’s leaving, he expects his father to bargain with him, to ask him not to go(or, at least, to tell him that he’ll have to go with him), but he doesn’t do either, and somehow that doesn’t feel like rejection, it feels like respect.

His father pulls him in for a hug, and Nathan hugs him back tightly, lingering to prolong the warm sensation.

“I’ll try to make you proud,” he says, but his father laughs gruffly.

“You already have.”

And that space? The one he hadn’t known how to fill before? It’s spilling over now.

~~

**_raven_ **

She doesn’t love Kyle Wick.

Or, at least, she’s not in love with him.

Maybe it’s just still too soon—time seems to pass by in the strangest way on the earth, and each day feels like its own eternity—or maybe he’s just not the one.

Raven used to think Finn was the one, but most days she’s sure that he wasn’t.

He was her love, her brother, her _family_ , and she doesn’t mind tangling it all up in her mind, because he was _important_.

It feels like he was alive even just the day before, and like he’s been gone for years at times, and the two seem to merge together to stop her from ever feeling like she can move on just as she also feels like she’s long past needing to. On the outside, she’s always as strong as she can possibly be. She pushes ahead fearlessly.

Inside, she’s conflicted.

The truth is that she’s not sure if Finn has much to do with her confusion over Kyle.

She likes him, and they have a fun, nice sense of companionship, and the sex isn’t terrible, but too much of the person she is happens to be wrapped up in dead boys and the hands she buries in mechanical woes.

She distracts herself from the thought of Kyle by doing other things. She indulges in avoidance and denial, because it’s easier that way.

Kyle seems to have taken ‘don’t leave me’ from the power plant to be some sort of signal of her feelings for him, though those words had more to do with her than him, of that much she’s certain, but at least he isn’t demanding answers or decisions.

And the truth is that it’s getting easier to pretend, to fall into habits with him. It’s easier to be snappy and sarcastic and sexy and clever than it is to be _real_.

And since they’re friends, when she does have to be real she’s not entirely sure it’s romantic bonding, because it could just as easier be a consequence of her growing trust and affection for him.

She’s never lied about this to him. She’s told him she’s not sure how she feels, that she’s confused, but he seems to misunderstand all her other cues about what’s going on with her.

Usually, however, it still feels nice.

It’s comforting, like a soft pillow or a good night’s sleep, and for now that’s enough, and she’s said as much to him, and it seems not to bother him too badly.

Raven spends a lot of time watching him these days—actually, that’s not quite it. She spends a lot of time _watching_ in general. She’s caught more frequently than she’d like to be, and she’s beginning to develop a reputation.

(This is the exact wording Bellamy used with a patented smirk and a teasing tone: “You’re creeping people out, and developing a bit of a reputation while you’re at it.” Raven had simply stared at him for a moment and replied “Good,” before smiling and laughing it off.)

She watches other people too.

She watches Octavia and Lincoln, as much of a unit as ever, so in tune with each other that Raven feels a bitter acid burn its way from her stomach up to her mouth.

She’s very curious about them in particular, trying to figure out if they look the same from the outside as she and Wick do, but she doesn’t draw any useful conclusions.

Raven’s tired of not knowing what she’s feeling, but before that she was tired of knowing exactly what she was feeling, because it _hurt_ so much she could barely breathe some days. Maybe not knowing is better—just living in the moment, and taking things one day at a time.

Maybe, but she’s not so sure yet.

~~

“If you’re going, then I’m going with you.” Kyle keeps saying this, and Raven keeps telling him no.

“You have to stay here, you know that. They need you.” She’s conflicted about what she actually wants him to do—but beneath _yes_ and _no_ she just wants him not to make the decision based on the fact that she’s going.

 “Stop shutting me out,” he says, and Raven fights the urge to sneer.

“Then come,” Raven gives up finally, because she’s tired of fighting, and he can make his own goddamn decisions. He’s a grown ass man, and she can’t control him anymore than he can control her.

“Good,” he says, and he should sound happier, since he just got what he wanted, but he sounds unhappy, which only serves to irritate her.

“Okay then,” Raven pushes back the irritation. “I have to get back to actually doing something with my time,” she teases, and he smiles slightly, not whole-heartedly the way he usually does.

She thinks she’s wearing on him, and she’s not proud of it.

He leans over to kiss her cheek, and she goes off to find Jasper.

She needs to feel useful. The only way she feels like she’s remotely okay is to keep pushing herself through new challenges.

The bone marrow extraction hasn’t made her bones ache in days, at least not more than the phantom pains she still can’t quite shake.

(When Bellamy asked her if she were completely sure she wanted to go, if she were ready to go, she hadn’t even hesitated to say yes.)

She finds Jasper sorting food stuffs.

He tends to go wherever the people he’s avoiding _aren’t_ , and he’s masterfully good at that.

“Hey goggle boy,” Raven greets him, and he looks up at her lethargically. He has bags under his eyes, and his cheeks look like they’re thinning out. He’s tired, she realizes, and her heart aches for him.

“I haven’t worn them in a long time,” Jasper says, but he doesn’t stop what he’s doing.

“You know that’s not the point,” Raven says, leaning over a table and reaching toward a bowl of nuts. Her attempt at levity has apparently not worked. She frowns. “I thought we weren’t supposed to eat these.” She plops down on a chair and picks up a handful, then drops them back into the bowl one at a time.

“Only when they go bad,” Jasper explains. “But when they do, they cause hallucinations, and that’s reason enough for people to grab them anyway.”

“You know,” Raven says as lightly as she can manage. “When everyone ate the Jobi nuts back at the dropship, Monty totally walked in on me and Finn pretty much naked, saying he was looking for the moon.”

Jasper doesn’t respond verbally to Raven’s words, but he stiffens his already tense body even more when she mentions Monty.

Still a sore topic, no matter what she tries to do.

She wants to shove them in a room somewhere and make them talk this out, but the truth is that she’s not sure they’ll get past this. And maybe they shouldn’t.

Raven wouldn’t abandon either of the boys for anything, but she knows what it’s like to feel a poisonous hatred for someone, for them to have had a role in the death of someone you love.

It’s hard to get over that.

In some ways it’s easier not to have Clarke here, because now Raven doesn’t have to worry about seeing her every day, but in most other ways, it’s not.

She’d just managed to start to heal, to move past all of this, and then Clarke had up and left(and that, more than anything, is what makes Raven angry).

After everything they’d been through, she’d _left_.

(You stay and _fight_ —that’s what you do.)

Raven is self-aware enough to know that if Clarke came back, Raven would be happy to see her, but that’s beside the point.

Raven watches as Jasper carries on sorting, and then moves on to viciously peeling vegetables with a knife after he sits down across from her at the table.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Raven says. “You and Monty are best friends, you can’t just—“

Jasper looks up at her sharply. “We were,” Jasper says, and he sounds so tired, so heartbroken that she decides to back off a little, for now. “I can make my own choices, and do whatever I want.”

She keeps trying to get through to him, but every time she does, Jasper lashes out. She’s tried casually sneaking in information about Monty(he gets upset at her, but something tells Raven that he still wants to know, and so she keeps doing it), trying to gently coax him out of his stupor, and trying to just be blunt and force him to face the reality of the situation. Nothing seems to work.

Raven decides to change the subject.

“What do you think of the quest to Jaha’s utopia?” Raven asks casually.

“Jaha’s an asshole,” Jasper says, and that’s . . . kind of an answer.

“Aren’t we all?” Raven muses.

Jasper shrugs. “Maybe,” he says softly.

“Do you want to go?” Raven asks, because she’s tired of beating around the bush.

Jasper hesitates. “I don’t know.”

“We’re leaving the day after tomorrow,” Raven tells him.

Jasper raises an eyebrow. “We?”

“Yeah,” Raven says. “I’m going.” She spreads her arms wide like _duh, obviously_.

“Why?” Jasper asks. “I don’t get it. Why would you want to go?”

“Curiosity, boredom—the fact that my friends are going, and I’m tired of worrying about them, and not being able to do anything about it. I’m not going to live like that anymore.”

Jasper nods his head, like that makes sense, and something in Raven’s chest eases. It hadn’t made sense to Wick. She’d almost told Bellamy that when he asked, because he would have understood, because of his sister, but she hadn’t. He would though, and she knows that, and that makes all the difference.

There’s a brief silence, and Jasper just keeps peeling.

“Why do you keep asking for shifts in the kitchen?” Raven asks finally.

Jasper shrugs, but then he answers. “Because either no one’s here, or there are too many people too busy to ask questions. And I don’t have to think about—“ Jasper pauses, then sighs heavily, and Raven wants to comfort him, but doesn’t know how. “Anything,” he finishes.

“You have to think about it eventually,” Raven points out. “You can’t live like this forever.”

“It’s all I can do right now,” Jasper says.

Raven gently bites the inside of her lip and traces a path along the letters someone had carved into the table in front of her.

“You could come with us,” Raven suggests. “I know you’re angry, and I know it’s easier to bury yourself in work, and barely talk to anyone, but you could come.”

“I’m not angry,” Jasper admits, and Raven tilts her head to the side.

“Really?” she asks.

“I mean, I am, but I’m just miserable most of the time. I just—I feel burnt out, and empty inside, like someone stuck their hands into my chest and carved out my heart with their bare hands.”

“Descriptive,” Raven says, but she reaches out a hand across the table, and places it on top of Jasper’s, stopping his vicious vegetable peeling. “You’re going to be okay.”

“I don’t feel like I am,” Jasper says. “I feel like I barely recognize myself, barely feel like I’m in my own body most of the time.”

Raven strokes the side of his hand with her thumb. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I’m still sorry,” she says. “I know it’s hard, but we’re your people, your family—Monty’s your family too, and he wouldn’t hesitate to do everything in his power to help you if you’d only let him think there was the tiniest amount of hope that you’d accept that help.”

“I know,” Jasper says. “I’m not ready. I still—when I look at him, I just—“

Raven hopes that they’ll find a way back to each other before it’s too late, because right now they’re both in pain, and they’ve both made mistakes, and it’s an impossible situation. “Monty’s coming,” Raven says. “You should at least say goodbye, just in case the worst happens.”

Jasper hesitates. “You’ll be fine. If Jaha could send the message, then that means it’s safe.”

“When has the ground ever been safe?”  Raven asks, and from the look on his face, Jasper knows she’s right.

“I’m not saying we’re definitely going to die, because I hope not,” Raven continues. “I’m just saying that there are a limited number of chances we have to make things right before we run out of time. You don’t have to forgive him,” Raven says.

Jasper stays silent, so she continues. “If you want to hate him for the rest of your life, then go ahead. But we’re not kids who don’t know any better. We’re in charge of our lives, and if we make choices, we have to live by them. Just make sure you’re making the right ones.”

~~

**_bellamy_ **

“Your group doesn’t surprise me,” Abby says. “You gravitate toward each other.” It’s been relatively easy for the members of the original delinquents with family members who survived the crash to earth to blend back into the fabric of the larger group. But for those without family, or with difficult family ties, it’s been a delicate, complicated process.

“That’s what happens,” Bellamy says, though he doesn’t go into dangerous territory, doesn’t bother to place blame, or point out that all of this has happened for a _reason_.

They’re all alive now, and they’re trying to live their lives. _That_ is what’s important.

“Just be careful,” Abby says lightly, and Bellamy nods.

“We’ll be fine.”

“You’ll contact us twice a day,” Abby says. “Noon, and then before you go to sleep at night.”

“Got it,” Bellamy says patiently, though she’s told him this four times already.

It’s important to begin with, and clearly very important to her—Bellamy wonders, faintly, whether she misses having someone to mother, and so she’s trying to mother them all now.

She’s a lot more than that though, and he’s not trying to minimize her accomplishments, or her role in the camp, but it’s a part of her identity that seems to matter to her, that seems to inform the choices she makes and the way that she approaches situations.

Abby starts in on his physical then, because she’s insisted that anyone who wants to go has to be at least relatively healthy. Abby keeps talking, listing off important information to remember, and he reminds himself to focus, because it doesn’t hurt to clarify anything that seems confusing to him.

“Thank you,” she says at one point after a brief silence.

“For what?” Bellamy asks gruffly.

“For looking for my daughter,” Abby says. He looks up in surprise, because he hadn’t told anyone except Monty that that’s what he’d been doing. He thinks a few others have guessed though, including Octavia, who clearly hadn’t seemed very happy about it. Abby gives him a knowing look now. “I know that if she wanted to come back, then she would, but it still—“ Abby trails off. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” Bellamy says, and that’s true.

Abby lifts an eyebrow in askance, but he doesn’t divulge anything more. “Still, thank you,” she says finally.

She shows him a carefully packed bag of medicines that she’d chosen for their trip. Some of them are from the Ark, some from plants they’ve found on the ground, and some from their trips back to Mt. Weather—first to bury the bodies, to show respect to the innocents and those who had tried to help save their people, and then to gather supplies.

Briefly, someone had suggested taking up residence at Mt. Weather, but that idea had been shot down quickly. There are too many ghosts in that place, from the residents of the mountain itself, to those who had been murdered for their survival.

When they’re done, Abby gives him a considering look. “Good luck,” is all she says, but Bellamy wonders what she was thinking.

“Thanks,” he says. It’s almost time to go.

~~

**_raven_ **

Somehow, Raven’s not surprised when she sees Jasper show up on the morning that they’re supposed leave. He’s ready and packed to go, sure of his place as part of this mission.

He very studiously doesn’t look at Monty, and barely makes eye contact with anyone else.

Raven _is_ surprised that Jasper managed to have a civil conversation with Bellamy—something he clearly did, because Bellamy’s not surprised, and Bellamy’s an open book once you figure out how to read him—because most days he doesn’t talk to him at all.

Their group is made up of Bellamy, herself, Wick, Jasper, Monty, Miller, Lincoln and Octavia, Harper—Monroe got turned away just that morning and replaced, because she’d broken her ankle while out hunting—a non-delinquent teen who was apparently training to be a guard before the Ark fell, a seasoned guard, and one of Abby’s healer trainees, Lena.

Raven runs through the list of things in her pack—food, extra brace for her leg, etc etc—when Bellamy walks up beside her. “Did you write a speech?” Raven asks teasingly.

“I don’t write speeches,” Bellamy says.

“Oh, so they just naturally come out intense and motivational then?” Raven tilts her head to the side to see his face, and he looks grumpy, but she sees a hint of a smile. “You do make a lot of speeches.”

“It’s true,” Monty says, coming up beside them. “I think it might be your _thing_.”

“I hate you both,” Bellamy says, but he’s still smiling, and he turns to face the group and gives a goddamn inspirational speech which almost gets through to her cynical and cold heart—okay, it gets through.

She’s ready for this, she tells herself. She knows she’d joked about Jaha’s utopia, but she honestly wonders what it’s like.

(Later, when everything’s going to crap, she’ll remember this moment and wish she had stayed home.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence, death, and references to canonical awfulness.
> 
> All mistakes are my own.
> 
> We're finally almost done with the 'journey' part of the fic! I'm very excited for all of you to see what happens when they get where they're going. The next chapter, however, will feature Clarke, and a bit of a guest appearance by someone else.

**_monty_ **

It won’t stop raining.

The funny part is that it doesn’t start raining until they’re already a day into their journey, so it’s not like they can just turn around and wait out the weather. Lincoln shrugs when Bellamy asks him about the weather and how long he thinks the storm will last.

Monty doesn’t blame him, because it’s not like he’s a weather wizard or something.

Monty tries to distract himself from the cold by thinking about other things—but that just leads him back to the fact that Jasper won’t speak to him anymore(though he will apparently look at him now, when he thinks Monty doesn’t notice). And _that_ just leads him back to the guilt weighing heavily on his conscience.

Monty feels ridiculously cold all the way to his bones, like he’s never quite felt before. The temperature on the Ark was so carefully regulated, and there’d only been a handful of truly cold days on the ground before he’d been kidnapped by Mt. Weather, and so he’s simply not used to this.

There were times when Mt. Weather felt cold, but that place had a terrifying chill to it more than anything else(at least, it had once they’d discovered what had really been going on there).

Monty’s teeth chatter, and he rubs his arms, trying to get some warmth into them while they trudge along until Bellamy sighs and calls it a day.

They take the easy way out the first night that it rains—they’re all so cold and tired from the rain that they only put up two of their tents, and just huddle together inside of them for warmth.

Monty ends up next to Nathan(or does Nathan end up next to him? He’s not sure, he was too cold to pay attention to how the sleeping arrangements turned out the way they did), between him and the side of the tent, and feels warmer already.

They’re pressed awkwardly up against each other(Monty’s on his back, and Nathan’s on his side facing Monty, but Monty doesn’t blame him for that, because the little asshole guard trainee Ian is on the other side of him), and Monty’s vaguely aware of the fact that Nathan is really, _really_ attractive(okay, it’s not exactly a vague thought), and Monty doesn’t know how to make the situation less awkward.

“Hey,” Nathan says. “You okay?”

“Just cold,” Monty answers, though _just_ _cold_ doesn’t feel like it remotely covers how he feels.

“Well, this is cozy,” Nathan says.

“Definitely snug,” Monty agrees.

Nathan moves slightly, trying to get more comfortable. His arm presses up against Monty’s slightly, and the warmth is comforting. “I wouldn’t want to be in the other tent,” he says conversationally.

“Why’s that?” Monty asks.

“Raven snores,” Nathan explains. “Have you never heard her?” Monty can practically feel his amused smile in the darkness. It’s not mocking, it’s just . . . amused.

“Oh wow, no,” Monty chuckles lightly. “How bad?”

“Very loudly,” Nathan says. “Like the way I imagine a snoring dinosaur to sound like. In fact—“he goes quiet. “Do you hear that?”

“What?” Monty asks.

“Shh,” Nathan murmurs, and Monty lies there quietly. He hears a slight murmuring sound, but that has to just be the rain—oh _crap_.

“Is that—“ It is, it’s _exactly_ what Monty imagines a snoring dinosaur to sound like.

“Yes,” Nathan confirms. “Yes, it is,” and Monty laughs out loud. It sounds almost cute, not loud and grating the way some people snore, Monty thinks. It’s sweet, especially coming from someone who (to Monty at least) seems so formidable and nearly perfect. Monty wonders how the others could possibly be sleeping right now (certainly Wick, who Monty knows is a light sleeper, but maybe they’re just so bone-tired, they’d passed out).

The sound of his own laughter almost sounds foreign to him, but it’s real, and calming, even though Ian hisses at them to shut up. Lincoln and Octavia are sound asleep, and they don’t stir on that side of the tent. But Bellamy chuckles when Nathan says sorry with the least amount of sincerity Monty could ever imagine in an apology, so he must be awake.

Nathan curls a little closer to Monty and whispers to him this time. “Sorry.”

Nathan’s breath tickles the little hairs on Monty’s neck, so Monty tilts his head to the side to where Nathan is, and _wow_ they’re very close. He tilts his head back, and pretends he hadn’t noticed.

Nathan seems completely unaware of this fact, and he goes on to make a silly joke, and Monty shakes with laughter through the shivers, because yes, of course, he’s still freezing cold.

“Do you want me to—“ Nathan hesitates. “Do you want to, uh, conserve body heat?” If it were anyone else, Monty might think it’s a line.

“I’m not sure how much more we could share,” Monty points out, and he feels foolish for drawing attention to how close they are. He’s uncomfortably aware of his breathing and movements now, and so he tries to stay completely still, and completely calm.

Monty still feels wet from the rain, though less so than when they climbed into the tent, so at least there’s that. He’ll be fine.

Nathan’s a good friend, Monty thinks, as Nathan gravitates even closer toward him anyway.

Monty’s never been quite this close to him before, and his heart is beating so fast, he’s surprised no one in the tent is commenting on it. It sounds thunderingly loud to him, but he knows it’s just because he’s so incredibly aware of his own body right now.

He mentally shakes himself, because physically doing so would probably invite more questions, and breathes in and out slowly, counting his breaths.

He tries to focus on thinking about absolutely nothing, clearing his mind for at least the time being.

Clearing his mind never quite works these days—all it does is leave more room for the stark truths of his life to stand around and torture him without distraction. He’s never going to forget what it’s like to let children burn, or move on from the fact that his best friend (rightfully) hates him.

He deserves that.

“Hey,” Nathan says softly. “Relax,” he reaches out to squeeze Monty’s shoulder with the hand that he’s not halfway using as a pillow. It’s like he can hear the cacophony of sound inside of Monty’s head. The physical contact is a nice lifeline to the real, physical world, and he grabs onto it.

He tries to focus on nothingness. Miraculously, he does, and he soon falls asleep.

(This is strange, strange stuff, because he hasn’t fallen asleep without hours of tossing and turning in weeks, but tonight he does.)

~~

Monty wakes up halfway through the night drenched in sweat and halfway sobbing, but Nathan, whose unburied arm has settled on the blanket over Monty’s stomach, gently pulls Monty closer to himself, and stuns the panic right out of him.

“Nathan?” he whispers slightly, but Nathan doesn’t respond. He must be asleep, Monty reasons, and he’s thankful for that.

Monty breathes in and out deeply, trying to push away his guilt long enough to sleep.

When he falls back asleep, he doesn’t wake again, and this, at least, is progress.

~~

According to the map and vague instructions, it would take about seven days to complete their journey if they took the most obvious route. But apparently there’s a world of dangers between them and wherever Jaha is, and so they have to go around it all.

So instead of seven days, it’s _twelve_.

But then once they've actually started the journey, it rains for two days, and the wind is so intense(and blowing against them, of course, which is not a great start for this whole quest), Monty swears it nearly lifts him off the ground and flings him into the sky at least a few times.

Finally, the rain stops, and they’re just left with the bitter cold and vicious winds.

Their cart of supplies has to be distributed between them, because everything’s threatening to fly about wildly, and Lena’s stubbornly still pulling the thing along.

“Maybe we should have waited till spring,” Raven suggests, wincing slightly as they walk.

“I think it’s good that we went now,” Nathan says from the other side of Monty. “I think cabin fever would have set in if we’d just sat on it till then.”

“Yeah,” Monty agrees. Nathan wanders a little faster for a moment, because he gets mildly impatient(but he always slows back down to Monty’s speed, which is nice, because he’s good company), and Harper comes up beside Monty before he even gets a chance to turn to Raven and ask her if she’s okay without prying ears.

Harper, though, is not a fool. “Hey, Raven, are you okay?”

“Fine,” Raven says, smiling brightly(and falsely), and it’s clearly that she’s not.

Harper raises an eyebrow. “Doesn’t look like it,” she says dubiously. “Is it your leg?”

Monty is reminded of something about Harper at this moment—she’s not one to mince words, unless she’s stumbling awkwardly through a romantic overture, which Monty hasn’t seen her do since Jasper.

Raven huffs. “I said I could do this,” she says. “And I intend to do it.”

“We could always stop for a moment,” Monty suggests. “I could even say I’m the one who needs to.”

Raven smiles thankfully. “You’re a good friend, Monty Green,” she says with a hiss of pain and a genuine half-smile. “But we’ve been walking for a lot longer than usual, so I’m just not used to it.”

“Hmm,” Harper murmurs, giving Raven a careful once-over. She shakes her head. “I’ll be right back.”

Harper wanders off, and Raven sends a curious look toward Monty, who simply shrugs.

Harper ends up next to Lena, and next thing they know, she’s got the empty cart right next to them. “Get in.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Raven says, but she looks tempted.

Jasper and Wick wander over then, which just continues to turn the whole situation into a spectacle, which in turn is clearly making Raven less comfortable by the moment.

“What’s wrong?” Wick asks.

“I’m just a little tired,” Raven says with a dramatic sigh. “But these two are being melodramatic about it.”

“Obviously,” Harper says dryly. “Get in the cart.”

“I told you—“ Wick starts to say, but then he stops and sighs.

Raven’s mouth settles in a hard line and she looks like she’s about to take on the world, a look Monty is quite familiar with. If he were Harper, or even Wick, he’d be a little worried.

 “Hey,” Jasper says, tilting his head to side slightly. “We all need a little help sometimes. It’s okay.”

Their little group is falling a bit behind everyone else, and so they really need to make a decision soon.

Raven’s face softens, and she very visibly hesitates.

Monty reaches out a hand and gently takes Raven’s, pulling her toward the cart.

“We’ll take turns,” Jasper says. “Pulling and sitting, just so that you don’t think you’re getting out of this whole trip easily,” he teases, and Raven smiles gratefully.

Jasper and Wick grab the handles on either side of the cart, and they pull the cart forward against the wind, which is starting to die down a little, but only a little.

~~

“I spy something brown,” Harper declares. “Brown-ish, anyway.”

“Let me guess,” Nathan says dryly. “You see sand.” Monty smiles and fights the laugh bubbling up inside of him. Nathan meets his eyes and smiles, and something warm glows in Monty’s chest.

“Nathan, you’re ruining the fun of the game,” Harper complains, frowning slightly. She links her arm through Monty’s. “Tell him he’s being ridiculous.” Harper and Monty are two of the only people Monty knows who actually call Nathan by his first name, except for his dad, of course. It’s interesting, and Monty thinks it speaks to the bond they have.

It’s just different from everything else, he thinks. Special.

Monty looks between the two of them and laughs.

He feels freer than he’s felt in a while, though his heart is still heavy.

This trip is giving him hope in ways he hadn’t quite let himself dream of.

“He’d have less of a point if the last three things you ‘spied’ weren’t also sand,” Monty teases gently.

The map has a very careful AVOID THESE AREAS sign over much of the desert—there’s a section labeled BANDITS, and a section labeled LAND MINES, and yeah, Monty thinks they’re probably better off avoiding both of those.

 “I wonder if there’s anything special there,” Monty muses out loud.

Nathan and Harper both look at him.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m meandering a bit. Just thinking about what we might find.”

“Maybe a beach,” Harper says wistfully. “I’ve always wanted to see the beach. It always looked like so much fun in all of the old movies and shows.”

“I’ve had enough sand to last a lifetime,” Nathan says with a shrug. “We’ll see the ocean though. That’s pretty damn awesome.”

Monty’s excited about the ocean too.

Earth hasn’t always been kind to them, but it’s often overwhelming at times in terms of what it has to offer.

The world is oddly stunning and beautiful for a place where an entire race almost destroyed itself less than a hundred years ago.

Harper’s arm is still linked with his, and she turns slightly and smiles at him. “There’s a lot of pretty damn awesome stuff on the earth,” she says softly.

Monty sees Nathan frown out of the corner of his eye, and wonders why, faintly, until Bellamy calls out that it’s time to take a break to eat and contact Abby.

~~

Monty replays his choices all the time, never forgets what it was like to sit there in that chair, typing away—small movements that meant the devastation of a whole people.

He wonders a lot of the time if that’s exactly how the people who’d destroyed the world before had felt, almost disconnected from their movements, because the weight of their own humanity and so much more was dependent on simple keystrokes and mouse clicks.

He had felt it all though, once it was over.

He’d sat there numbly as Clarke and Bellamy had struggled over the decision, and tried to come up with another solution.

He’d tried too, but he’d failed.

This thing they did to save their people—he’s heard people call them heroes, but he doesn’t feel like a hero, he feels barely human—it’s made him reevaluate everything he knows about himself.

Who is he now?

He wishes Clarke were here, because while Bellamy also understands what he’s going through,  Monty doesn’t always know how to talk to him. There’s an underlying kindness to who Bellamy is—Monty’s seen it with Octavia, with Clarke, and even with himself—but Monty is still hesitant.

The thing is, and Monty’s never said this out loud before—and he’s barely ever admitted it to himself—that he doesn’t know if he wants to feel better.

He doesn’t want to be okay with all of those people dying, even if he could be. He doesn’t want to move on, doesn’t want the heavy weight to leave him.

It grounds him, and reminds him of the difficult choices they all have to make to survive, and it reminds him to take care, because what happened was a last resort.

He doesn’t want to ever be put into a situation like that again.

~~

After a very long day walking through the sand, which pulls you down when you step down too firmly, which means that you have to use even more strength to pull your legs back out, Monty settles down to relax.

_Peace_ , he thinks.

“So,” Nathan plops down next to Monty in the tent they’re sharing. “I think Harper likes you.”

“We are friends,” Monty points out. “That’s kind of how the whole thing works. Most of the time, anyway.” Monty had been friends with Jasper long enough to know that there are days when friends annoy the crap out of each other, and barely manage to spend five minutes together without wanting to pull each other’s hair out.

“Not like that,” Nathan says, frowning slightly. “I—uh, like more than that?”

“Oh,” Monty says. “Uhhh. I don’t—“ Monty makes a face. “I don’t think she does? She’s different when she likes someone like that, and I think she’d tell me. Probably.”

Nathan shrugs. “I guess,” he says, but he sounds unconvinced.

Monty fights the urge to try to explain everything to Nathan.

“Why do you think that, anyway?” Monty wonders.

“Just a vibe—she watches you a lot.” Nathan sounds a little uncomfortable now, and Monty reaches out to pat his shoulder gently, like _hey, dude, it’s fine._

“I think you’re reading a little too much into it,” Monty suggests gently. “How often do you think she watches me?” Monty’s face twists comically. “I’ve never—“

“Just more than most people,” Nathan says now.

It’s probably just because she’s _worried_ about him. She’s said that enough times that Monty’s not entirely what he’s supposed to do with the information, because he’s muddling through. Some days are easier than others, and some are worse.

“How much time do _you_ spend time looking at Harper?” Monty teases now. “In order to notice that?”

Monty tilts his head to the side to see Nathan in the slight light beating in as the sun sets. Nathan looks embarrassed now, and Monty’s tempted to tease him more, because that’s what friends do, but he’s beginning to blush red himself. He’s confused, and there’s a tight feeling in his chest that he’s felt before.

“It’s not a big deal,” Nathan says now, but Monty’s already moved into a panicky stage of feelings-based disaster.

It’s how he felt every time he saw Jasper show interest in someone else, even though he knew better, even though he _knew_ that it was hopeless, until he’d figured out how to move on.

“Sure it is,” Monty says now. “There’s too much at stake not to tell someone you care about them if you do.” Life is too fleeting, he thinks.

Nathan hesitates. “I wish I had someone I cared enough about to feel that way.” He sounds like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t.

“You will,” Monty says surely. “We all will one day, if we’re lucky. And I choose to believe we are. And if you like Harper—“ the words catch in the back of his throat, and he has to force them out. “You should tell her.”

“I don’t,” Nathan says, but Monty doesn’t quite believe him.

Monty’s seen Nathan looking at Harper strangely before—usually frowning, which is probably not the _best_ way to develop a romantic rapport.

Monty is feeling the stirrings of _something_ in his chest now, and it feels complicated and frustrating, and he wishes this conversation had never happened.

If he didn’t think Nathan had slight feelings for Harper, then he’d probably consider following his own advice, but Nathan does, and so Monty pushes his own feelings out of his mind.

Monty viciously tells himself to rip up the roots of whatever this thing that’s growing inside of him is, because he’s not doing this again.

It’s the early stages, Monty tells himself, and he’ll squash it like a bug.

~~

The next morning, Monty’s completely forgotten the conversation of the past night, at least temporarily, because he has more pressing things to worry about.

 “If we ever make it there,” Bellamy says matter-of-factly. “I’m going to kill Jaha.”

Bellamy’s tied up, as the rest of them are, and there’s a group of people going through all of their stuff, grabbing what they like or need.

Apparently the bandits have a larger hunting space than Jaha had thought, which only serves to make Monty worry about extra mine fields now.

“Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve tried,” that complete _dick_ Ian says, and the older guard gives him a sharp look, and the rest of the group glares at him.

“Why are you even here?” Monty hears Octavia mutter.

Monty’s a little more concerned with the people holding them hostage, of course, though he supposes if these people wanted to kill them, then they already would have.

There goes the food, Monty winces. And the medicine, and—well, at least they can only take as much as they can carry—and then they find the cart, and start piling it full of things.

Well, Monty thinks, at least they aren’t dead.

The only way that this four-person team had even managed to get them into this situation is through an incredibly sneaky night-attack, when they were at their most vulnerable. Monty’s not sure who was on night guard duty, because it wasn’t _his_ turn, but he doesn’t blame them, because this could have happened to any of them.

Except Ian—if Ian was the one on guard duty, then Monty’ll definitely decide to hate and blame him, because he’s already a jackass anyway.

Lincoln, Bellamy, and Octavia look like they’ve all been through quite a fight. Monty, however, woke up to find himself lying on the ground staring up sky with his legs and hands tied.

Monty can only see a little of what’s going on from where he is—they’re all laid out several feet from each other, half-buried in the sand, because the wind is blowing it every which way.

Monty watches as Lincoln stares intensely at the back of one of the bandits, and Monty is pretty impressed when Lincoln pulls his hands out in front of himself and quickly unties Octavia while the thieves aren’t watching. Then he nods at her, and they both run over and _pounce_ on two of the thieves.

One of the others stumbles around and pulls out a knife, and everything goes silent.

Monty can’t see what’s happening, so he just tries to lift up his head and the muscles in his back strain painfully, but he keeps going.

Jasper has a knife to his throat, and Monty’s heart pulsates almost painfully in his chest, and he feels like he can’t breathe, and _no no no_.

“Leave him alone,” Monty yells.

“We’ll be going on our way,” the only woman says. Octavia and the person she’d attacked are a few feet away from each other after a bit of a scuffle, but Lincoln has his opponent in a choke-hold, clearly threatening to snap his neck.

“Let go of him,” Lincoln says, and Monty fleetingly wonders what his negotiation skills are like. “You leave our supplies, and you take your man alive, or I’ll kill him, and then I’ll kill you too.” Well, Monty thinks, that answers that.

“We could always kill your man,” the woman says.

“But then you won’t have leverage,” Bellamy calls out.

The woman doesn’t look like she’s going to back down, but then Octavia and her opponent get mixed up in a fight, and he has a knife at her throat too, and it’s clear how this is going to turn out.

Lincoln lets go of his opponent, and that man and the one holding Octavia let go and grab supplies, and start backing away from the group.

The woman looks at the guard holding Jasper, who pulls away and they both run away quickly.

Lincoln starts after them, but then he keels over, likely from one of the many injuries he’s sustained. The others are still tied up, except Octavia, who automatically goes to Lincoln’s side.

“Untie me, we have to go after them,” Ian sputters out. “We need to get those supplies back.”

He’s not wrong, but in the time that they’ve had already, Monty swears they’ve disappeared into the sand itself, and the wind is picking up again. By the time they’re all untied, there won’t be a trail to follow. They could try, but who knows how many more of them there’ll be at the end of the line? Or how many supplies they’ll waste on the trip there and back?

Monty thinks that’s all—that everything’s bad enough, and can’t possibly get worse, because they’re down about half of the supplies that they’d had left. Octavia moves over to help the rest of them get untied. She starts with Lena, who she practically pushes over to Lincoln’s side, and then moves on to Bellamy.

Lincoln is still doubled over in pain, and Lena’s already gone to tend to his wounds. “I think you broke a rib—“ she starts to say, but he backs away from her.

Again, Monty’s not sure how much worse this can get.

“They took the map,” Bellamy announces, and Monty’s eyes close, and he tries not to give into the panic threatening to overwhelm him.

Well, he thinks, he was clearly wrong.

~~

The good news is that they remember the general direction that they have to go in to get there, because they’ve stared at the map enough.

The bad news is that they’re guessing a little vaguely, and once they actually get where they’re going, they’re going to have to wander around a bit. Part of the reason their journey has been so long is that Jaha had given them a route around a body of water instead of just letting them cross it. Then again, Monty thinks, it’s not like they have a boat.

“Should have made a copy,” Bellamy mutters.

“Yup,” Monty says with a sigh. “Should have made a copy.”

“At least we’re almost there,” Bellamy says, clearly trying to comfort himself as much as Monty.

“Yup,” Monty says. They’ve got about three days till they hit their destination.

“I don’t know how everyone’s going to make this trip,” Bellamy says. “I don’t know if they should.”

Monty nods his head. “Maybe they shouldn’t.” There’s no doubt in his mind that they had to at least see what the place is like, but trying to move their entire group to wherever Jaha is might not be the most practical choice in the world.

Bellamy looks around and sighs heavily, like the weight of the world is on his shoulder(to a certain extent, Monty thinks, it must be). They keep walking for another half hour until Bellamy just drops his things on the ground and stretches his back. “We’re going to rest here for now.”

Monty settles in for another night, and Nathan wanders over to help him set up their tent, and Monty ignores the thumping of his heart, and the excessive amount of _awareness_ he feels right now.

Nathan’s hand passes over his own at one point, and Monty’s sharp intake of breath causes Nathan to look at him with concern. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Monty lies. “Just tired.”

~~

“ _My eyes_ ,” Monty moans later that day, turning around on his heel and walking away from the tent he’d just been about to walk into. He’d been looking for Octavia and—uh, wow.

He comes face to face with Jasper now, who is looking at him strangely.

Monty’s slight smile fades, and he freezes, just staring back.

“You look like you’ve seen something awful,” Jasper comments carefully, like he’s forcing out every syllable and sound with intense effort.

These are the first words that Jasper has spoken to him in a while, and so Monty tries to process that. “Just—“ Monty motions behind himself at the tent. “Uhhhh. Don’t go in there,” he says.

Jasper nods slightly. “Thanks for the warning,” he says, and he looks like he’d like to say more, so Monty just stands there awkwardly, just in the far out hope that he will.

“Lincoln and Octavia are, uh, spending some time together,” Monty explains, because the silence starts to get to him.

Jasper cocks his head to the side and almost looks like he wants to smile. He doesn’t. “Let’s hope Bellamy doesn’t try to go in there.”

Monty laughs. “Yeah, let’s hope.”

They keep staring at each other, and Jasper’s shutting down by the second, and it’s clear that this is not some magical breakthrough for the two of them.

Monty knows he’s hoping against hope—knows he probably doesn’t deserve it, knows that it’s a lot to ask, but he hopes for it anyway.

Monty’s heart feels like it breaks again—but really, how many times can a heart shatter in exactly the same places before you just can’t put it back together again?

Jasper turns around and starts to walk away, and Monty watches him go.

He feels a moment of irrational, foolish hope when Jasper looks over his shoulder at him.

It’s brief, and only lasts for a single moment, but he _looks_.

Monty chooses to believe it means something.

~~

At least they’re almost there, Monty tells himself.

They’re low on food and water, and they’re moving along slowly. Lena had looked over all of them, especially those who had sustained injuries in the struggle with the thieves, but it’s not like there’s much she can do for any of them.

Raven’s suffering too, but she’s doing so quietly, though anyone can see the pain on her face. Bellamy calls twice as many breaks as before, and they stop earlier each night than they probably should. Raven refuses to keep riding in the cart, because everyone else is so exhausted and can’t pull her along, even for a little while.

Monty wanders over to see how she’s doing. “Hey,” he says. “Are you okay?”

Raven tries to smile, and winces instead. She shakes her head, and her eyes well up with tears. “I should have stayed home. I didn’t know it was going to be this bad.”

“I don’t think of us did,” Monty admits. “I just want to lie down and sleep for a month.”

Raven nods slightly, like she understands. Monty thinks he’s making things harder on her, so he touches her arm gently, and lets her lean against him, and they walk together without words for a while.

It’s been a relatively quiet trip since the thieves stole half of their supplies.

The quiet gives Monty a little bit too much time to think, which is a little frustrating, because even though trudging along is _exhausting_ , that’s precisely what’s supposed to make it easy to zone out.

They’ve been trying to conserve energy, which makes them silent and uninterested in the snarky banter or shared storytelling they’d filled the time with for much of the trip.

Monty wants to lie down on the ground and never get back up, but that’s not an option, and so he soldiers on, trying to stay focused on the destination.

“Does anyone see that?” Bellamy asks, pointing ahead of them.

It’s so far away; it almost looks like a mirage. Someone excitedly says the word _trees_ , and they are start trudging a little faster.

They reach the edge of the forest and just _stop_. Many of them are out of breath, and all of them are exhausted.

 “Finally,” Octavia sounds like she might cry tears of joy. “I thought we were never going to get here.”

“Me too,” Bellamy says softly.

Once they get through a small patch of trees, they just need to wander around until they find whatever sort of civilization Jaha’s found. The map hadn’t been too clear, but it better be worth it.

Monty breathes in deeply to steel himself for the rest of their journey, and he mentally hypes himself up—your feet aren’t aching, they’re just excited, your body doesn’t ache, it just really wants to be somewhere else right now.

  _Finally._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All mistakes are my own.
> 
> Warnings for expletives, references to canonical suicide, trauma, and death.

_**clarke** _

“—I really know how to pick them, huh?” Clarke asks wryly, finishing off her story.

Obviously, her horse doesn’t respond.

Clarke is tired, clearly, as she’s currently attempting to share gossip with her horse, who frankly doesn’t seem particularly interested in the foolishness of pesky humans.

Before, when she’d chosen to leave Camp Jaha, she’d thought that this was what she needed. She’d thought she’d needed peace and quiet, to be alone with her thoughts, to work through her issues all on her own.

The truth is that the quiet is too quiet, and she doesn’t have peace, she has a raging inferno inside her head.

She’s drowning in her own mind, and it’s only going to get worse.

She’d only left Polis a week ago, and she’s already talking to the horse about pretty much everything in her life, from her guilt to her love of drawing(something that feels alien to her now, somehow, like a piece of herself from another life).

Her inner thighs are aching again—particularly badly, that is, because they  _always_  ache, since she’s not used to riding all of the time.

She appreciates the horse, she does, but she spends as much time walking beside her as she does riding.

Clarke slides off the side of the horse, gently petting her mane and then moving to the side so that she can drink from a stream.

“I’m tired, Elia,” Clarke says softly. “I have no idea where I’m going,” she admits.

~~

They get trapped in a rainstorm, and Clarke tries to keep Elia calm in a small cave, just barely big enough for the both of them.

Clarke’s bedding is wet, and tilted against the side of the wall in the hopes that it’ll dry out enough for her to sleep.

She hadn’t exactly thought all of this out very well.

She doesn’t exactly have a  _plan_.

It’s getting colder by the day, and she needs a place to stay and rest, but the truth is that nothing seems quite right.

She doesn’t feel like she belongs much of anywhere. She doesn’t feel drawn in any particular direction—she heads along the coast for a while, then circles back around when she comes in contact with the edge of a new group of grounder people.

From their markings, she’s sure they’re the sea people. She faintly remembers descriptions—first from Lincoln, and then from Lexa—and thus when she sees one(and they don’t see her), she gently steps backward to her mini-camp where Elia’s waiting and packs everything up, getting ready to go.

Part of her doesn’t want to be around people, and part of her craves it.

She feels like a mix of contradictions these days.

She misses her friends(she can’t bear to see them).

She misses people(she wants to be alone).

She’s fascinated by the ground, and by all it has to offer, and yet while it spurs her forward and keeps her going, it also just feels like too much.

She wonders what her people are doing back at Camp Jaha—wonders if Jasper’s forgiven Bellamy or Monty, or if Raven or Harper, and any other number of wounded people are healing well.

She wonders, most of all, if they’re okay.

She knows they must be. She knows that Lexa swears that her people are not interested in a new war even though the alliance has failed. For now, their people will simply avoid one another.

Clarke’s not sure how long that can last. All it takes is one bitter Arker and one bitter grounder to come across each other in the forest, and then for someone to get hurt. Then everything will be chaos, and death, and destruction again. 

This, Clarke knows.

Her heart aches at the thought of that, because she won't be there to make things right. And yet, part of her is grateful for that.

She doesn’t have to make the hard decisions anymore. She doesn’t have to be responsible for everyone.

All of that had been too much—everyone was always counting on her, and she was always forging ahead, trying to save her people.

She wishes things were simple.  She doesn’t quite yearn for the blissful ignorance she’d had on the Ark before she’d learned the truth that had eventually killed her father.

She just—she just wishes things were different.

~~

Elia is a calm horse. She’s a lot like the horse Clarke had learned to ride on—an adventure that had involved bruised ribs and only a handful of falls to the ground before she’d gotten it.

She hadn’t been the only one. Octavia had gotten on the horse, and then she'd spent five minutes trying to get the horse to go in the direction she’d wanted it to go before she’d simply shrugged, and slid back to the ground.

“I don’t think it’s for me,” Octavia had said.

“It’s uncomfortable,” Clarke had agreed. “But it's nice.” A part of Clarke—the part unharmed by everything they’d done to survive on the ground—had been almost childishly pleased by the entire situation.

A real life horse had been standing in front of her, and she could reach out and touch it without it running away.

That, in so many ways, felt like a blessing.

This had happened just as everything in her life was changing and twisting in ways that terrified her. She’d felt like she’d been losing her grip constantly, just barely managing to keep a handle on everything.

But having one of Lexa’s warriors teach her(and Octavia, who had simply stood off to the side for most of the lesson) how to properly interact with the horse—how to guide it, how to communicate with it—well, that had been a small moment of clarity for her.

In that moment, everything had seemed simple, intuitive.

That moment had been overwhelmed by the next—another worry, another increase in the burden she’d been carrying.

And yet, it was also one of the last times that Octavia hadn't hated her.

That regret hangs heavy in her heart. 

She wonders if she’d stayed how people would treat her now, how they’d look at her.

She remembers the faces of her people when she killed Finn to secure the alliance. Those who didn’t know her were simply disgusted, and those who did know her were mostly terrified, or enraged.

She remembers Octavia’s face when she discovered that Clarke had let TonDC burn. She remembers her  _mother’s_  face when she let TonDC burn.

(Now, that feels like an eternity ago, like a version of herself she regrets just as she fears that if anything had gone differently, they wouldn't have gotten into Mt. Weather at all, and Bellamy would be dead, and so would all of their people who had been held captive.)

She wonders if even those who’d tried to understand would hate her now.

Raven had hated her for a while, but they’d come around to an understanding of sorts. 

Jasper certainly hates her now, though Monty—well, Clarke thinks he understands, though he probably doesn’t understand the full story even now. 

Even Bellamy might hate her now.

She wonders if it’s all sunk in now. Kill Finn, lie about Octavia being okay, let TonDC burn, kill innocent people to save your own.

He’d offered her forgiveness, even after hearing the litany of her sins on the way back from Mt. Weather.

She’d spent most of her time walking numbly, but at one point Bellamy had walked up beside her, and suddenly the words had fallen from her lips in a violent waterfall.

She’s vicious sometimes, she knows this—she’s brave and tenacious and stubborn at times. The closer she is to falling apart, the more confident she seems until she’s completely breaking.

But then, in that moment, she’d broken.

He’d looked at her then, and he hadn’t hated her, and that, she thinks, is some sort of miracle.

She wonders if he hates her now, and then she squashes the thought.

Hated or not, she’s made her choice.

After she’d left Polis, she’d felt hope. She’d felt like she could go back home one day, and it would be just fine.

But with each passing day, she wonders if it might not just be better if everyone forgets her. If one day, she’s a distant memory—maybe just a few lines in a storybook, or part of some whispered oral history that eventually erases all sense of truth eventually.

And so, she carries on.

~~

She’s six, and Wells Jaha just kissed her cheek, and she’d declared them married.

She’s a child then, and doesn’t understand what marriage is, but she understands love.

She understands loyalty, and friendship, and the fact that Wells feels like an extension of herself, and that’s exactly how the important people in your life always feel.

They’re part of you, written into your DNA.

Her mother tries to explain that you can’t actually get married at six—“Though you make a very lovely bride,” she says kindly. “And he makes a very handsome groom.”

She doesn’t understand that, of course. She just knows that he’s her family, and thus she never wants to lose him.

It feels that simple.

~~

She’s eighteen, and she’s a murderer—a killer in the name of protection, in the name of saving her people.

Her mother looks at her and says, “Maybe there are no good guys,” and Clarke doesn’t know if that makes her feel worse or better.

She’d believed in good things once, she’d believed in things like hope and honor and  _the right thing_.

It had been easier then, when it was all hypothetical. It hadn’t meant anything, it hadn’t felt as much like life and death.

She’s eighteen, and she’s a murderer—and that’s not who she’s going to be anymore.

She hasn't just lost those she loves, she's lost  _herself._

She's never felt more lost.

~~

Some days she does nothing much at all.

She tries to draw—pulls out materials she’d taken from the bunker, and tries to do something.

Landscapes, abstract art, just anything she can possibly think of.

Every attempt ends with her either ripping the paper to pieces or putting the blank page back in her pack.

She used to be able to channel her negative energy into art. It used to make her feel free when she was trapped by everything else in her life.

Supplies on the Ark had been limited, and so she’d had to be creative, and that had been its own channel of her creative instincts.

But now, it’s like she’s blocked. She tries, she does. She presses pencil to paper, and forces out lines and shapes, but pushing through doesn’t work any better than simply sitting there and waiting for a moment of clarity and inspiration.

Either way, she fails.

~~

She makes a choice—she chooses a new direction, and stay nears the sea, and just keeps going.

She's searching for something she can't quite explain, or even truly imagine in her mind.

It's a hope, more than anything.

She caresses Elia's mane gently, and tells her that they're both going to be okay.

 ~~

_**murphy** _

He’s not sure there’s anything better than the life he currently has—there’s alcohol, there’s food, there’s shelter. He’s pretty much set, if he wants to stay.

He’d go after Jaha, you know, if it weren’t for the fact that Jaha never came back for him, and so it’s pretty likely that he’s dead, just to be fair.

Murphy doesn’t wander too far from his little home, because every direction feels like certain death.

He could try going back to Camp Jaha, but for what?

He’s sure they’re all glad to be rid of him, and to be honest? He’s glad to be rid of them too.

He gets a little lonely sometimes, but then he turns on the TV and watches centuries old movies and TV shows, and that helps. (And the truth is that even if he were surrounded by people, they’d still all hate him, and he’d still be completely alone.)

Solar panels, Murphy thinks, are a blessing. He doesn’t have to worry about running out of electricity, and thus he can keep himself entertained until the day he croaks.

Murphy’s pretty sure he’ll get bored by then and wonder what the point of life is, but that’s the kind of question he thinks anyone could ask at any point in any life.

Anyway, things are going pretty well, but then he hears noise outside one day, a human voice muttering. He can’t even tell what they’re saying, or even what language it’s in, but  _damn it._

He should know better than to leave the door open, but he’s never even heard anyone come around here—he’s surrounded by water on three sides, and there’s only one way you can get to where he is by land, so he’d thought he’d be okay.

He should have known better than that.

He picks up a gun and wanders carefully over to his door. He slowly,  _very slowly_ , nudges his way to the open door, and then he looks outside, hoping to get a glimpse of the person before they see him.

Of all the possibilities, this had seemed the least likely.

“Clarke?” Murphy’s eyes go so wide he’s almost shocked they’re not falling out of his skull. “Holy shit.”

Clarke looks just as surprised to see him.

She wanders over to him, her face sort of stony, but about to break, like she might start laughing or crying hysterically at any moment. She pinches him, and then  _hmms_  and  _hahs_  for a moment.

“Ow,” Murphy hisses, because she doesn't exactly have a light touch. “I’m not a mirage.”

“I had to make sure,” Clarke says softly, shrugging slightly.

“How the hell did you end up here?” Murphy asks, because  _what the hell_.

“How did  _you_ end up here?” Clarke asks back, tilting to the side so that she can look around him, trying to see inside his current personal palace. "Hmm."

It's just a very strange situation, and for a moment he even considers pinching  _her_  to make sure she's not some sort of hallucination.

This doesn't really make sense. 

At the very least, he’d expect other people to be with her?

Unless, of course, everyone else is dead.

~~

Clarke goes straight for the alcohol on his counter, and he almost regrets pulling out some of the nice(as far as he can tell, anyway, what does he know about it?) bottles from the cellar, which is almost entirely food and booze. The guy who had lived here before was  _his_  kind of guy, definitely.

The look on Clarke's face makes the slight regret fade, because she looks like she needs it. She looks tired, and he's pretty sure she's covered in dried blood. He really hopes she doesn't try to sit down like that, because he doesn't want to have to clean up that kind of mess.

Murphy explains how he came to be here, and he fully expects an inquisition, or at least some interest, but all Clarke does is grab a bottle of something and take a drink, then frown.

She moves onto another bottle, and seems much happier with that, so she picks it up and starts wandering around the little post-apocalyptic bachelor bad.

“I was going to go after Jaha—“ Murphy explains. “But he followed that drone, and beyond a general direction, I don’t really know where he is.”

Clarke makes some sort of meaningless sound Murphy's not sure how to decode. “Do you have running water?”

“Yeah,” Murphy answers, a little confused. “Clarke—uhhh.” They’ve never been very close, and she’d almost gotten him killed once, but he’s moved on from that. Mostly.

This is still strange behavior for her though.

Clarke turns to him then, looking away from a painting he’d found and hung up. It was colorful, and he kinda likes it.

“I need a shower,” Clarke says. “Is that an option?”

Murphy is far beyond bewildered now. “Uh, first door on the left—“ he points toward a hallway that also leads to the stairs to the cellar, and a room with a really comfortable bed.

“Do you mind?” Clarke asks.

“No, go ahead,” Murphy shrugs, and she wanders off.

He waits while she showers. He even decides to be a good host, and he pulls out some food for her, and sets aside a shirt and pants that might fit her. They’ll be a little baggy, but they’ll be clean.

He has so many questions, and so he pulls a nice bottle of wine out of the cooler and sets it down.

Letting her continue to drink from the bottle of bourbon will just get her  _really_ drunk, and then she won’t be able to answer many questions. The wine, however, has a much lower alcohol content.

He hangs the clothes on the bathroom door and knocks and tells her they’re there.

“Thank you,” Clarke calls out, and Murphy wanders off to keep himself busy.

By the time she wanders into the living room, fingers running through her wet hair to untangle it, he’s ridiculously impatient.

“So?” He lifts his hands up in a 'what the hell is going on?' sort of gesture. 

Clarke grabs the food he’d taken out, then sits down on the couch and starts eating ravenously. “I ran out of supplies the day before yesterday,” she tells him.

That means she’d been drinking on an almost empty, if not completely empty, stomach. Crap.

“What happened?” Murphy asks. “Why are you here? Where’s everyone else?” He may not  _like_  most of them, but he doesn't exactly want them to all be dead. Well, not  _anymore._

Clarke laughs, but it sounds painful, like she might start crying at any moment.

Murphy  _really_  doesn't want to watch Clarke Griffin cry.

“Someone shot my horse right out from underneath me,” Clarke says. “We’d traveled together for weeks, and then  _bam_ , she was dead.” She delivers that news clinically, like she's trying not to feel the full weight of how upset she is. 

“That sucks,” Murphy says as sympathetically as he can manage considering how impatient he is.

Clarke is quiet now, just munching along.

“What happened?” Murphy asks again, this time softly, more gently. He's not sure how well he manages it, but at least he tried.

“I killed them all,” Clarke says finally. “The Mountain Men are all dead.”

Murphy stays where he is near the counter, and grabs onto it to keep himself standing. “What about—what about everyone else?” he fights to keep his voice steady.

“Mostly alive,” Clarke reveals. She leans back against the couch. She looks completely exhausted, by more than just the journey and the lack of food, Murphy thinks. “After we got back to Camp Jaha, I left. I couldn’t—I couldn’t do it anymore. I’ve been wandering around pretty much ever since. I’m so—“ Clarke sighs. “I want to go back, but I can’t. I want to keep going as I am, but it’s too hard,” her voice breaks on the last bit, and Murphy averts his gaze while she wipes at the corners of her eyes.

Clarke starts eating again, polishing off what he’d set out for her, and then she sets aside her mess and curls up on the couch, leaning her head against a pillow on the side of it.

“So, uh,” Murphy doesn’t quite know what to say. He’d hadn’t exactly been expecting company, and he’s not sure exactly what he should be doing right now.

What’s proper etiquette in this situation? Screw proper etiquette, he decides.

“Here,” he says, handing her the wine bottle, which he’d nearly forgotten about. “The sink’ll give you water, there are glasses in the cupboards. The couch folds out into a really comfortable bed,” he says. He’d figured that out a few days in, and it had scared the crap out of him when he’d pushed the button accidentally. He gestures at it now, and Clarke nods.

She looks like she needs to rest, and so he backs off toward the room he’d claimed as his own.

~~

She wakes up screaming bloody murder.

~~

_**clarke** _

She’s being chased, and she can’t stop. She feels like she hasn’t slept in days, and she’s running low on food and water.

And then—Elia is killed right out from underneath her with a spear meant for  _her_ , and Clarke slides off her back, just barely managing to avoid Elia falling on top of her.

She grabs bags strategically, only what she can carry, and only what’s practical, like the last of her food and her weapons.

She’s on the ground hiding behind Elia, and she doesn’t realize it then, but the horse is bleeding all over her.

She’s covered in blood, and she’s stuck in her head, like she can’t hear anything at all except a high-pitched hum in the back of her mind.

She runs and runs until she can’t run anymore, and she collapses near the water.

She looks down at herself and sees herself covered in blood, and she screams.

~~

She screams herself awake.

Murphy is standing there awkwardly after shaking her to get her to fully wake up.

She breathes hard and heavily, like she can barely catch her breath.

There’s only so much, she thinks, that a person can take.

She’d been in denial before—numb from the heaviness of the pain, feeling like she was going to cry all the time, like she’d been carrying a heavy burden.

It’s not just weight, it’s a searing, burning pain inside of her.

She can’t lose anything else, not anymore. (She has nothing  _left_  to lose.)

“Um—“ Murphy’s not very good at the comforting thing, but he’s trying, and he deserves points for that.

His solution is to offer her a glass of water, and pat her shoulder awkwardly.

She doesn’t offer any explanations, and he doesn’t ask, and it suits them both, she thinks.

She’ll be fine. She’s strong.

There are times, she thinks, when she’s too tired to be anything else.

And there are times, she thinks, when she feels anything but.

“Do you want me to do anything?” Murphy asks uncomfortably. He's cringing slightly, like he wants to be anywhere but here with her.

“No,” Clarke shakes her head. She sits up slightly on the bed, and leans against the back of the couch. She curls up, and presses her chest against her legs.

Murphy hesitates, just standing there like he has no idea what he’s supposed to do.

He plops down on a comfy chair, shrugging slightly like this is the best he can do.

He sits there and keeps her company—at least, that’s what Clarke thinks he’s trying to do. They don’t talk, they just sit.

Murphy eventually falls asleep on the chair, snoring gently.

Clarke just closes her eyes and waits. She doesn’t fall asleep until the early morning light appears, and by that point her head feels so heavy she doesn’t bother to try to move it, and so she falls asleep leaning against the couch, even though she knows her body will ache later. But hey, she thinks, she’s had worse, much worse, for what feels like forever.

~~

_**Murphy** _

Clarke wakes up a few more times, though the screaming only happens sometimes.

For a night or two he sleeps in the chair, but then Clarke tells him not to, so he goes back to sleeping comfortably in his bed.

He even offers it to her, sympathetically, because he’s not an  _entirely_  awful human being, you know? Even though people think so.

She turns him down though, quite surely.

Murphy waits patiently for a few days, waiting for her to indicate that she has some kind of plan, but she doesn’t seem all that interested in that right now.

In fact, she’s doing a lot of what he’d done when he’d first found the place—she’s relaxing, wandering about, finding cool stuff.

He doesn't begrudge her an attempt at healing whatever is broken inside of her.

“Have you seen this?” Clarke asks a few days in when he wanders into the living room, munching away at his breakfast. She’s eating too, and her rapt gaze has settled on the television.

He turns toward the television screen and sees the man who committed suicide.

Murphy doesn’t like to think about it, but someone must have moved the body, right?

Bodies just don’t entirely decompose, bones and all, in a relatively safe and preserved space.

The entire thing is just  _weird_ , and he prefers not to think about it.

“There’s an entire collection of videos,” Clarke says, staring intently. “He keeps mentioning the weapons program. I’d always wondered what the war came down to,” she says softly. “Who actually ended it all.” 

They'd only gotten bits and pieces of that history on the Ark, because communication between the space stations and earth had shut down days before everything had went up in flames. 

“Some girl,” Murphy shrugs. “He never names her, never says  _why_. He kills himself in the last video.”

“Oh,” Clarke says, and she sets her food down as if she’s lost her appetite. “I imagine it was difficult to live with the knowledge of what he’d helped do,” she says, and it sounds like she’s speaking from personal experience.

It’s a funny world, Murphy thinks humorlessly, in that somehow Clarke has far more blood on her hands than he does.

And yet, she’d killed to save, and he’d killed—well, out of some sick sense of vengeance, out of anger and hatred and this darkness that had built inside of him.

He wonders if that still makes her a better person than he is.

He wonders if there’s even such a thing as a  _good_  person anyway.

Probably not, but he might try to be one.

~~

Unsurprisingly, Clarke becomes interested in the drones.

“Where do they go?”

“I’ve never followed them,” Murphy answers. “I’m guessing Jaha either didn’t care to come back or he died, and I—“ Murphy feels slight guilt about this. “I never bothered to check.” 

He hadn’t wanted to die. He’s safe here—happy, and fed, and not terrified out of his mind.

“I’m going to,” Clarke says firmly, and he’s not surprised. He’d expected as much eventually, because that’s the kind of person she is.

It isn’t the kind of person he is, and they both know that, so she doesn’t ask him to come.

For some reason, he offers anyway. “I’ll come with you,” he says. “Two is better than one, and all that.” He wants to make some sort of sarcastic comment, but the look on Clarke’s face is grateful, and she just doesn’t want to be alone.

And maybe he doesn’t want to be alone anymore either.

~~

They put together supplies and they prepare to leave.

Murphy has every intention of coming back—hopefully Jaha’s place will be nearby, and that’ll be the end of that.

He won’t have to question what happened to Jaha, or feel any sort of niggling guilt in the back of his mind about not going after him after he’d healed up.

Murphy always reminds himself that Jaha didn’t come looking for him either, but it’s a moot point, and he’s pretty sure that Clarke wouldn’t care if he told her that. She’d still want to go.

They wander along for most of a day, trekking through sand, and then forest, and then—and then there it is.

“Wow,” Murphy says, then whistles. “That’s impressive. Too bad we didn’t land over here,” he says conversationally. “I bet you could fit quite a few delinquent teens in there.” 

It's a giant, sprawling house, and it looks genuinely  _nice_ , like it came right out of a history book or a video from a century ago.

Clarke rolls her eyes, but doesn’t comment back.

“It’s huge,” he points out. “Do you think that’s where Jaha is?”

Clarke sighs now. “I don’t know,” but then they stop staring, and start walking again, this time a little more quickly from the excitement of it all.

They walk right up to the door, and then they both stop.

“Should we knock?” Murphy asks dryly, but then that’s exactly what Clarke does.

No one answers, and neither of them are surprised.

The house is pretty good condition on the outside, but on the inside?

It’s fucking  _amazing._

“We should go through all of the rooms,” Clarke says.

Murphy makes a face. “Couldn’t we just, you know, yell a little? See if anyone comes?”

“If anyone did,” Clarke points out. “It might not end well.”

And then, they hear a gentle laugh.

They both whirl around to see  _her_ —a pretty woman in a red dress, smiling broadly at the two of them.

Instinctively, Murphy doesn’t trust her, and from the way Clarke’s hand goes to her gun, he’s sure she doesn’t either.

“Welcome,” the woman says. “I’ve been waiting for you.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update is a lot later than I wanted it to be, but I'm in the middle of a move, and I cancelled my internet service, and thus posting isn't as easy as it used to be. I do have more chapters of this fic already written, I just need to edit and find an opportunity to post them.

**_octavia_ **

“I don’t like it,” Octavia says immediately, staring up at the giant house.

They split up and check the perimeter, and then Bellamy stations Ian and the older guard at the front, just in case they need a quick escape.

 aven and Lena are staying near the door—Raven to rest, and Lena to make sure she’s okay. Raven shouldn’t have come, but no one knows that better than she does now, Octavia thinks.

“I don’t either,” Bellamy agrees, rubbing his forehead and sighing.

“We need a rest,” Octavia sighs. “Maybe we should wait till tomorrow, and then go in.”

Bellamy shakes his head. “We’re already out of supplies, and—“ he motions at the rest of their group. “It’s right there. If there’s a chance this is real, then we need whatever’s inside.”

He’s not wrong, but she doesn’t like it at all. “It’s big,” Octavia says, then hesitates.

“But if Jaha dragged us all the way over here,” Bellamy finishes, “Then it should be bigger.”

Octavia nods slightly. Maybe there are a lot of supplies inside, or maybe there’s an entire collection of mansions nearby. Maybe, Octavia thinks, but maybe not.

Lincoln finishes his survey of the land and comes up beside Octavia. He looks as apprehensive as she feels.

Octavia reaches for his hand, but then he pulls her into his arms, and kisses her forehead softly.

She leans into the embrace for a moment, and tries to ground herself. She has this, she tells herself.

When she finally pulls back, Lincoln nods at her slightly, and then pulls out his weapon.

She pulls out of her sword, and Bellamy waves everyone toward the front of the house, and he opens the doors in one large sweeping gesture.

They peek inside.

Someone whistles, and then Miller speaks. “Wow,” he says. “This place is amazing.”

Octavia doesn’t spare him a glance, just keeps inching forward, looking around.

Once they’re all inside, minus their standing guards, Octavia is completely on high alert.

Her stomach is tense, attempting to signal some sort of impending doom, Octavia thinks.

Raven walks in then, hissing in pain, and leaning against Lena. “I wonder where the kitchen is,” she laughs. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“One thing at a time, Raven,” Bellamy says softly. “We stay together for now.”

“There are at least three floors,” Monty points out. “And probably a basement too, considering the size. Where do we start?”

“It depends,” Octavia hears, and she spins around, because that’s not a voice she recognizes. “What are you looking for?”

The voice belongs to a woman in a red dress.

“Who the hell are you?” Bellamy asks gruffly. “We were led here,” he says, gun raised and pointed at the woman.

The woman steps forward and everyone starts to freak out for a moment, all readjusting their stances and weapons.

She’s too close to Bellamy, Octavia thinks, but then someone fires their gun, and it hits the wall behind the woman.

The woman frowns. “That wasn’t very nice,” she says, lifting a finger and swinging it back and forth slightly, as if they’re petulant children, and they’ve misbehaved.

Octavia already hates her.

She doesn’t have a chance for much more thought, because then there’s a blaring noise, and even louder slamming noises. By the time she realizes what’s happening, Lena is running for the doors, and she just barely manages to get out before a heavy metal door slams down over the opening, and they’re trapped.

Lincoln hadn’t frozen like Octavia though, and he’d rushed the woman and run right through her. Maybe she’s some sort of hologram, but Octavia doesn’t really care.

“That’s okay,” the woman says, directing her gaze at Raven, and Octavia doesn’t know what to do, and she feels like she might throw up at any moment. “I’m far more interested in our lovely mechanic here.”

“How do you know anything about me?” Raven asks, full of spitfire and anger.

The woman simply smiles. “You can call me ALIE,” she says.

“What are you?” Monty asks now, and she turns to look at him now.

“I’m sure you can determine the answer to that question all on your own,” ALIE says. “Now,” she clasps her imaginary hands together. “Why don’t you all get used to your new home, and I’ll go tell the other guests that you’ve arrived, so that they can prepare for dinner.”

Octavia looks at Lincoln, who reaches for her hand, and she thinks it might not be just to comfort her because she’s scared. She thinks he might be too, and for good reason.

“Guests?” Bellamy asks. “Jaha and the others?”

ALIE smiles. “I suppose you’ll have to wait and see.”

~~

**_nathan_ **

They try everything.

Bellamy grabs some large piece of metal that Nathan thinks is supposed to be ‘art’—something he doesn’t get, because it kind of looks like a giant finger—and tries to bulldoze through the wall with it.

There’s metal in the wall, and once he hits that, the look on his face is worrying.

He looks hopeless, like every chance at this actually turning out okay has been lost.

Nathan doesn’t blame him, because he feels the same way.

Everything from the walls to the windows to the ceiling is impenetrable, no matter how hard you rail against them.

At one point, Raven takes out her gun and limps off. She shoots into a random room, just to avoid the bullet ricocheting back and hurting someone. She comes back, and the annoyance on her face explains the sound of the gunfire and its failure.

“At least it’s a nice place,” Wick says, and they all turn to look at him with varying degrees of horror and shock on their faces. “I’m not wrong,” Wick says. “Have you seen those beds? I laid down on one, and I felt like I was on a cloud.”

They all keep staring at him, and Raven just pats his shoulder. “Careful, you’re digging yourself into a hole, honey.”

They’ve all been trapped before. This is their story—born in giant metal boxes in the sky, destined to die that way, until fate intervened.

Nathan’s not entirely sure he wants to call it fate, but it’s certainly something.

Then, most of them had been trapped in Mt. Weather, and that had been another experience full of claustrophobia and misery. Nathan has grown used to desperately forcing himself not to panic in enclosed spaces, small or not.

He wishes he’d stayed outside.

“She’s probably going to kill us anyway,” Jasper says casually, like it’s some sort of joke, and Nathan kind of wants to punch him until he turns and sees the look on Jasper’s face. He’s scared, just like the rest of them.

“We won’t go down without a fight,” Bellamy says. He looks up towards one of the cameras that Nathan has only just noticed. “I promise you that.”

Harper grabs Monty’s arm and drags him over to where Nathan is standing, and then nudges them both off through a doorway and into the living room. “We need to get through the locked doors in this place,” she says.

“We can’t even get outside,” Monty says. “How are we supposed to get into places she doesn’t want us to go?”

Harper makes a face. “I don’t care what _she_ wants.”

Nathan meets Monty’s eyes. “What is she, anyway?”

“I’ve got a few guesses, but the most likely is artificial intelligence. There’d been impressive strides back on earth, especially during the war, because they could use it in combat situations,” Monty makes a face. “I can’t believe _that_ didn’t work out,” he says sarcastically.

“I don’t care why, I just want out,” Harper says, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Her hands are shaking, Nathan realizes, and he reaches out to grab them, trying to comfort her slightly. “Maybe she’s got some sort of command center in here that we can destroy.”

“Harper, you’re okay,” Nathan assures her. Well, as okay as any of them can be, considering the circumstances.

“Breathe,” Monty says. “Slowly, deeply. We’ll find a way out of this. We always do.”

“Too bad Clarke’s not here,” Harper says.

“We’ve got Bellamy,” Nathan reminds her. “And the rest of us—all of us. We’ll do this.”

“Maybe we’ll even be lucky,” Monty says, reaching a hand out and putting it over Nathan and Harper’s hands, patting them awkwardly and then letting his hand settle on top of Nathan’s.

It makes Nathan feel steady.

“Maybe,” Monty continues now, “She just has some questions, and then she’ll let us go.”

“Yeah, sure, that’ll happen,” Harper says, frowning. “Maybe she’s got a bunch of people in the basement, and they want our bone marrow so that they can wander out into the real world. Oh wait, that was the _last_ set of homicidal assholes we came across.”

Harper pulls her hands out of Nathan’s. She wanders off then, clearly not feeling much better from their little talk.

“I think we just made things worse,” Monty says.

“I don’t think there’s a way to do that,” Nathan replies, and he turns his right hand over and holds Monty’s hand for a split second before letting both of his hands drop away.

Nathan looks around the room, and definitely not at Monty.

Monty sighs. “At least this room has couches,” Monty says, “Unlike the super fancy main hall.” He plops down on one of them now, and moans. “Oh my god, that feels amazing.”

They’re all so tired, and they shouldn’t lower their guard, but they’ve been walking for too long, they’ve been so hungry and tired.

ALIE could feed them now, but she’s ignoring them.

It’s about control, Nathan thinks, because she clearly intends to feed them eventually. 5:30 sharp, she’d said. Nathan has no idea what time it is now, because his watch broke weeks ago.

If terrible things are going to happen to them no matter what, he decides, maybe he ought to take a nap.

Nathan hesitates. “What the hell,” he shrugs, and plops down next to Monty.

“I’m so tired,” Monty mumbles, and Nathan’s eyes flutter closed.

“Bellamy’s going to kill us,” Nathan mutters, and Monty just grunts.

Bellamy’s too busy staring at the front door to the house, punishing himself for something he couldn’t have possibly seen coming.

Monty’s head lolls onto Nathan’s shoulder, and Nathan leans back gently, letting his head rest against Monty’s.

Nathan briefly wonders what’s going on with their people outside. Are they okay? Are they scared?

They’re hungry and tired too, Nathan thinks, but at least they’re still free.

~~

**_octavia_ **

“Dinner is served,” ALIE says, but Octavia doesn’t see her.

Maybe she has fancy speakers all over the house, who knows?

They’ve already decided that they’ll eat the food, since it’s not like it’ll make a difference.

If ALIE wants them dead, they’ll die. They’re already trapped in this place, subject to her whims. There’s little else she can do to them except kill them.

Octavia is long past tired of people trying to take advantage of her and her people.

She won’t stand for this.

She won’t be controlled like this, treated like some sort of caged animal.

That’s not who she is anymore.

Octavia’s stomach is cramping, and she’s light-headed and _starving_.

Everyone else looks the same, though Nathan and Monty have wandered back from another room with sleepy faces(and tousled hair, in Monty’s case). They’re not the only ones—Wick took a full-on shameless nap in one of the bedrooms, and he looks refreshed, which kind of makes Octavia hate him a little.

Raven is glaring at him now, because she hadn’t been able to sleep a wink. She’d tried to get the radio to work for a while before glaring at it and shoving it back in her pack. ALIE’s blocking the signal, but somehow that doesn’t surprise Octavia at all.

Octavia knows this because she’d sought Raven out to make sure she was okay. Raven had tried to sleep, but she’d been too afraid to, she’d explained.

This place—they don’t have to make it easy for whoever is doing this to them.

They head for the dining room now, following ALIE’s instructions. When they’d walked through the house looking for a weak spot, the dining room had been one of the doors they hadn’t been able to get through.

The metal door is still in place, but then they hear a click, and the door lifts, and Octavia’s jaw literally drops open.

It’s a phrase she’s never quite understood before, even in the stories her mother and Bellamy(more often Bellamy) would sometimes tell her when she got tired of the histories and the academic stuff. She hadn’t understood why she had to learn those considering that she’d be hiding under the floorboards for the rest of her life, but they’d insisted.

What had been the game plan, exactly? Was she supposed to live in secret until the day she died? Octavia’s not sure how long her mother had expected to keep up the charade. 

That’s a thought she’d often had, and now hardly seems like the right time to have it, considering that Clarke, Murphy and Jaha are all on the other side of the door.

Jaha looks beaten down and tired, but Clarke and Murphy look like they’re in pretty good shape.

Jaha looks ashamed now, and Murphy’s face is unreadable to her, but Clarke is an open book.

She looks sorry to see them, sorry that they’re all here, but then her eyes meet Bellamy’s, and then Raven’s and Monty’s and the others, and Octavia is almost ashamed that she looks away when Clarke’s eyes nearly meet her own.

Bellamy is the first to enter the dining room, slowly and almost a bit unsteadily, but when he’s only a few feet from Clarke, he stops, and ever so slightly spreads his arms, and it’s like she collapses into them.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” Octavia hears him say, and she averts her eyes. Lincoln grabs her hand and pulls her into the dining room, which is packed with a bit of a feast, and her mouth is painfully dry.

Once they’re all inside, the door slams shut behind them, even more quickly than the full house shut down, and it’s clear they won’t be going anywhere until ALIE allows them to.

~~

“Sit, please,” Jaha says, and they all sit, because the alternative is standing around awkwardly without much to do.

Actually, that’s not quite right. Murphy is already eating, carrying on as if none of them are there. Octavia concludes that the food is probably safe to eat.

Octavia’s hand is twitching to grab her sword, though it’s of no use right now.

“Stay calm,” Lincoln says softly, and she knows that’s his way of telling her that he’s on high alert too, but she needs to wait for her moment.

She directs a grateful glance his way, and then turns back to look at Clarke, who is sitting now and alternating between not looking at anyone and looking at Bellamy, who looks like he wants to spit out a hundred different questions, but he doesn’t know where to start.

Raven has no such problem. As soon as they’re all seated, she says bluntly. “What’s going on here?”

Jaha opens his mouth to answer, but then no words come out, and he just sighs as if he’s in pain, and closes his eyes.

“It’s complicated,” Clarke says, and _that’s_ helpful, Octavia thinks bitterly.

“We have no idea,” Murphy says then. “You should eat,” he waves at the table. “ALIE’s pretty bossy about our food intake.”

“Is our host going to show up?” Bellamy asks then, and Clarke shakes her head.

“What does Murphy mean? How can you not know what’s going on?” Octavia demands, directing her query toward Clarke.

Clarke hesitates. “We know part of the plan,” she says evasively. She picks up her fork and starts eating, even though she doesn’t look the least bit hungry.

She’s forcing it down, which means that Murphy was serious about the consequences of not eating, and so Octavia picks up her own fork, and watches others do the same, except Bellamy.

“This doesn’t feel right,” he says, directing his comment to Clarke.

Clarke tilts her head to the side. “It’s not,” she says. “But we still have to eat.” She meets his eyes then. “Murphy and I have been here for about a week, and we’re not showing any sorts of ill effects. Jaha’s been here much longer, and neither is he.” Minus the fact that he looks like he’s a dead man walking, though Octavia thinks that has little to nothing to do with the food.

Bellamy stares at her for a moment longer, and she nods slightly, and then he picks up his fork and starts eating.

It’s not long before they’re all eating ravenously. “Don’t eat too fast,” Clarke warns. “You’ll just make yourselves sick.”

Octavia’s got quite a few of her own questions, but they’re all hungry and dehydrated, and hopefully it’ll be time for answers soon.

~~

**_nathan_ **

“I’m pretty sure we’re all going to die,” Monty whispers to him, and Nathan’s stomach clenches painfully. He still forces himself to keep eating though, because they’re headed into a fight, and he needs to keep his strength up.

“We’ll be fine,” Nathan says softly.

“Sure,” Monty hisses out now. “Because we’ve had a really great history on earth so far—war with the grounders, kidnapped by Mountain Men, and now kidnapped by some AI who might have all kinds of scary, creepy plans for us.”

“When you put it like that,” Nathan says, “You make it sound bad.” He puts a lot of effort into delivering that perfectly deadpan, and he’s rewarded by the comical look on Monty’s face.

Monty glares at him then, but there’s no heat, just a friendly warmth, and an almost smile in his eyes.

Their circumstances don’t really allow for a _real_ smile.

They’re quiet again then—there are mumblings down the table, where a few others are trying to force conversations.

“It’s good to see Clarke again,” Monty says. “I’m glad—“

“She’s alive?” Nathan finishes. “Yeah, me too.”

Murphy, well, maybe not so much. Nathan’s not a huge fan of the guy, despite the fact that they’d been thick as thieves when they’d first gotten to the ground. Not by choice, Nathan’ll tell you that.

Nathan wants a personal greeting with Clarke, but there are other people who are far closer to her, and now—well, now’s not really the time anyway.

“For now,” Monty says, and Nathan realizes he’s talking about Clarke. “We’re all alive,” he says. “For now.”

“I’m not worried,” Nathan says, smiling slightly, even though all he feels is fear and absolute terror.

Monty opens his mouth to respond, but then never gets the chance.

A loud beep goes off then. “What was that?” Nathan asks.

“Warning bell,” Murphy says dryly. “ALIE thinks it only takes thirty-five minutes to eat dinner, and she likes to remind us that she’s in control every chance she gets.”

“We have five minutes,” Clarke tells them all.

Nathan looks down at his plate, and while he’d shoveled in quite a bit, he’s still hungry. “Pass the potatoes,” he says, and Monty hands them over, and Nathan eats the mashed potatoes as quickly as he can without any chance of vomiting later.

Monty takes a careful bite of his food, and eats so slowly it’s giving Nathan a bit of a headache.

Nathan worries about him. He worries about all of them.

The door opens up now, and it’s clear that they’re meant to leave the room.

This entire situation is starting to feel kind of surreal, and it’s not a _good_ feeling.

~~

**_octavia_ **

“So what does she want?” Bellamy asks again, once they’ve all filtered out of the dining room.

The door doesn’t slam behind them now.

Murphy sighs, like he understands something that the rest of them don’t. “I feel like when she scheduled me to put the dishes in the dishwasher, she should have taken into consideration how many people were going to be here,” he frowns slightly, and wanders back through the doorway, and starts collecting plates and putting them on a nearby cart that Octavia had noticed at one point.

Clarke waits a moment, and then sighs. “It’s bad,” she says.

“Prolonging telling the truth won’t make a difference,” Jaha says now, and he sits down in a nearby chair. Octavia realizes now that he looks even older than he had the last time she’d seen him. He looks like he’s about eighty. The lines on his face are severe, and Octavia feels a pang of sympathy until she reminds herself that she hates him.

She loses this train of thought with Clarke’s next words.

“She has a nuke,” Clarke reveals now, sounding like she’s literally forcing the words out of her mouth. “She wants someone to make it work.”

Octavia feels her entire body freeze and go numb, and she has to squeeze her hands several times to get the feeling back into them. “What the hell?”

“So why didn’t she kill you then?” Raven asks. “None of you guys are really cut out for that kind of work. If her plan is to kill everyone, all she needed was to get someone here who could.” She stops now, and her face is pained. “Which she did.”

“My apologies,” Jaha says now, and he sounds heartbroken, like he’s failed them. Which, yeah, he has. “She used me to send the message—or, well, my identity. I had nothing to do with the creation of whatever message she sent you.” That explains why it was just a map, and not a message. ALIE didn’t want to overplay her hand and risk someone thinking there was something strange about the message.

They’ve made a terrible mistake by coming here.

Again, “Then what the hell does she _want?”_ Miller demands now.

“Control,” Clarke says now, and she sounds small, and tired in ways Octavia’s never quite seen before. “She wants control over the future of the world.”

“Why doesn’t she just make her own little artificial intelligence babies then, and leave the rest of us alone?” Monty asks.

“Because,” Octavia goes cold, and reaches out her hand for Lincoln’s, who squeezes hers gently. “I have plans for all of you,” ALIE explains, appearing in the hallway.

Bellamy forces himself forward, and Clarke follows in his steps, coming up right beside him.

“You promised you’d explain once they got here,” Clarke says, and there’s no sign of fear on her face now.

Octavia wonders how she manages to _pretend_ so much. It’s far too easy for Clarke to lie, and Octavia knows what she’s capable of.

Part of her wonders if Clarke wouldn’t sell them all out if she thought it would keep the rest of their people safe.

She’s far too utilitarian to risk hundreds to save a handful of people.

ALIE smiles. Her dress is a vibrant red, a color Octavia’s seen little of outside the life bleeding out of people. “I did,” she says. “And I will.”

Octavia’s long past impatient at this point. “Just tell us what’s going on already,” she spits out, and from the smile on ALIE’s virtual face, it’s clear that this is a game to her.

She’s messing with them, playing around with some psychological warfare. This is all about whatever her master plan is.

“I was created by humans,” ALIE says, and someone mutters _duh_. Probably Monty, Octavia thinks.

ALIE ignores them, and carries on with her dramatic storytelling. Whoever programmed her, Octavia thinks, had a flair for the dramatic. “You’ve all made the wrong choices,” she continues. “Killing each other for little reason, squabbling like little children.”

“And killing us somehow makes that right?” Clarke demands now. “You’re the one who destroyed the world a hundred years ago,” Clarke hisses out now. “I saw the videos.”

What videos? Octavia wants to ask, but Clarke keeps going.

“How can you possibly think that makes sense?” Clarke stands her ground, and Octavia remembers what it was like to believe in her.

The perfect smile on ALIE’s face fades away. “We’re starting over,” she says then, and she sounds annoyed. “The next generation shall inherit a new earth,” ALIE tells them, and she smiles again now, even more broadly than before. “It’s very fitting. Humanity created me, cared for me, shaped me into what I am,” ALIE says. “And now I’ll do the same for humanity’s children.”

“Us?” Bellamy asks, and ALIE laughs.

“You,” she says, “And the children you’ll bear. Like I said before—we’re starting over. I’m going to wipe the slate clean, and we’ll start from the very beginning—a primordial Adam and Eve, so to speak.”

This, Octavia thinks, is monumentally _disturbing._

“I wish there were more of you,” ALIE says now, and she sounds disappointed. “But we’ll do some selective breeding, and we have the technology here to make some genetic adjustments. I suppose that’ll just have to do.”

Chaos breaks out then, and almost everyone’s talking over each other, nearly screaming, herself included.

“I’d rather die,” Octavia says eventually, and ALIE turns right to her.

She _laughs_. “I’m afraid that won’t be an option, Octavia.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My move is getting into crunch time, and so at the very latest a new chapter should be up in a week and a half, but possibly earlier if I can get myself over to free internet before then. Warnings for mentions of wounds that could potentially be fatal, expletives, and serious desire to murder artificial intelligence. Please read the end notes!

**_raven_ **

Raven’s not the kind of person who gives up without a fight—in fact, she’s not the kind of person likely to give up after the battle’s fought and lost, so long as she can still _fight_.

“You won’t be allowed near my systems,” ALIE says. “Until you’re deemed trustworthy,” she stares at her one moment more. _It_ stares at them one moment more. Raven hasn’t quite decided on a pronoun, though everyone else seems to content to allow ALIE female personhood. “Which you may never be.”

You’re fucking right, Raven wants to scream.

Raven’s assigned to basic appliance fixing and nonsense crap she doesn’t actually care about. Apparently there’s all sorts of equipment that can make their lives easier that she’s expected to just _fix_. She can do it, but it’s trivial, random crap. It’s insulting on more than a few levels.

ALIE seems to think that one-on-one conversations will somehow soften the fact that she’s holding them all captive. She’s wrong.

“If you choose not to complete your tasks, then you’ll suffer, not me,” ALIE says, completely disinterested in responding to Raven’s angry facial expressions. Maybe it just can’t tell, Raven thinks. Maybe ALIE’s not very good at reading human moods or thoughts. Good, Raven thinks, filing the information away for later.

In addition to her other duties, she’s given ‘thinking time’ during which she’s supposed to come around to ALIE’s way of thinking and decide to help blow up the rest of the goddamn world.

Yeah, no.

~~

Lena and the others are trapped outside, all passed out on the ground right outside the house, where it looks like they were all gassed. ALIE brings up a video feed just to show them how much control and power she really has. This computer program has a hell of a god complex.

“Get with the program,” ALIE says, “Or they’ll die, and then you will.”

“They’ll probably die anyway,” Jaha says. “From the harsh conditions outside.”

“Yeah,” Clarke chimes in. “We’re going to want more than just their lives. Send them food, supplies,” she says confidently, like they somehow have bargaining power.

“Very well,” ALIE says. “In addition, I’ll send a drone to follow them back to your former camp. If at any point you disappoint me, I’ll initiate a self-destruct sequence.”

It’d be enough to take out the three of them. If they make it all the way back to camp, it’ll be enough to take out more than that. Not everyone, but any means, but Raven’s not in the mood to lose _any_ more of her friends.

“You could always let them in,” Monty suggests, “Since you’d be better off with more people for your plan,” and it’s clear he’s testing ALIE, trying to see if he can make her—it—follow a particular thread of logic.

“I think you already know that won’t work,” ALIE says.

~~

“I’m not putting up with this,” Raven declares heatedly. Some of the others look tired already, almost defeated. That’s unacceptable. “We’re getting out of here.”

Clarke looks over at Bellamy and catches his eye, and they both walk over to her.

“Do you think you can get us out of here?” Clarke asks.

“I don’t know,” Raven admits. “But I’ll figure something out.”

Clarke turns her head and looks straight at a camera. “Just be careful, okay?” Clarke says, reaching out her hand and taking Raven’s.

She squeezes gently, and Raven feels the presence of paper. Raven squeezes her hand back, and then makes a fist, trying to hide the message. Clarke pulls away then and faces the group.

“You guys should all explore,” Clarke says loudly now. “Pick your bedrooms—relax in the bathrooms, maybe take a bath.” She looks at Raven when she says _bath_ , and Raven assumes that’s where she’s supposed to read this message, whatever it is. Apparently ALIE has human sensibilities, if she won’t spy on them in the bathtub. She will apparently watch them while they go to the bathroom, and that’s almost as creepy as the weird baby-making plan she has.

No, Raven thinks, not nearly.

“Sounds like a plan,” Raven says. “It’s getting late anyway.”

Raven’s not going to be able to sleep, and she wouldn’t even if she could.

She’s got work to do.

~~

“Damn it,” Raven says, hissing in pain when she drops a box on her toe. Of course it couldn’t be the _other_ toe, which wouldn’t hurt at all. “This place is a mess.”

“Ouch,” Kyle says sympathetically. “I don’t think ALIE intended for you to get started tonight.”

“She gave us our ‘assignments’ tonight,” Raven points out. “Who knows what her intentions are?” Raven’s completely exhausted, and she’s strained her back painfully somewhere along the line, but she’s stubborn.

Raven doesn’t really care if ALIE doubts her, because either way she’s going to get them all out of there, no matter what the cost.

She’s going through boxes and boxes of stuff in the basement area, where ALIE’s creators/or maybe just the people who’d lived in her house had stored all kinds of tech. She sits down on a chair and leans over the box she’d dropped on her toe, flipping it open. She starts to make her way through it even though her eyes are starting to swim a little from pure exhaustion.

She’s sure she can create something out of this.

“I’m not saying I don’t understand the theory behind going through all of this stuff,” Kyle says, “But we _could_ technically be having sex in an actual bed right now.”

He’s joking, and she knows that, but she still sends him a dirty look.

He smiles back at her. “I’m going to get a smile out of you,” he says. He comes up behind her, hugging her tightly around her midsection. “We’re going to get through this.”

Raven believes that, because she knows that she’s willing to die trying. She untangles herself from his arms and wanders over to open up another box.

“Do you think all the cameras in this place actually work?” Raven asks. The cameras confuse her, because it’s as if ALIE has been planning this for a long time, like this is what she’d wanted all along.

Destroy the world, then rebuild. It’s obscene. It seems likely that ALIE’s creators were just as twisted as she is.

“Yes,” ALIE says then through a speaker, and Kyle jumps like two feet in the air, and Raven rolls her eyes.

It’s creepy, but almost helpful, in a way.

Artificial intelligence or not, she’s a little too eager to show her hand.

~~

Raven roots through all of the clothes that ALIE points them toward, and grabs the first comfortable shirt and sweats that’ll fit. Raven can’t remember the last time she wore _pajamas_ , and she’s almost looking forward to it.

This entire house is so well-persevered, she thinks. It’s a miracle.

Or, some sort of curse.

Or, she thinks, just science. The clothes were all inside of airtight containers that preserved them perfectly. There’s no magic involved in that, Raven reminds herself.

She takes off her clothes, and holds Clarke’s message tightly in her hand, and steps into the shower, closing the curtain around her and turning on the water.

She looks down at the message. _Turn on the water, close the curtain, and she can’t hear or see you._

Well duh, Raven thinks. She got that from Clarke’s barely concealed secret message.

_If you have a plan, proposition Bellamy with a ‘shared shower.’_

Raven laughs at that, but hey, it’s a plan, right?

~~

Raven falls asleep eventually in the bedroom Kyle had pulled her toward. Raven doesn’t pay much attention to anyone else’s sleeping arrangements, but she sees some of them pair up, and she’s pretty sure it’s not sexual or romantic. Some of them, she thinks, simply don’t want to be alone in this place.

She doesn’t blame them, because neither does she. And it’s not just this place. She just doesn’t want to be alone at all.

And Kyle is nice, generally, and sometimes funny and _fun_ , and that, she thinks, has to be enough.

~~

She wakes up because Kyle is gently shaking her.

“You hit me in the face again,” he says with a sigh. “Roll over. Maybe it’ll help with the snoring too,” he says sleepily.

She rolls over, and falls right back asleep, dreaming of chaos and despair.

~~

Unlike some of the others, Raven doesn’t really have much of a strict schedule to follow, and that suits her quite nicely.

Kyle wanders off to help Monty with the hydroponics lab that Jaha had apparently been working on, which explains some of the fresh fruit and vegetables from the night before.

Breakfast is much less intense than dinner, and apparently not a group affair.

Instead, Jasper and Miller, who were apparently assigned to meal duty, leave out a bunch of baked breakfast foods, some oatmeal, and some fresh fruit.

Raven won’t admit this, but the muffins taste a lot like what she imagines the muffins in the afterlife to taste like—perfect.

She’s chewing on another muffin during her ‘quiet time’ in the living room when Jasper wanders up to her.

“The muffins are really good, aren’t they?” Jasper asks, and he doesn’t sound smug, surprisingly. “Nate’s apparently a really good cook.”

“Nate?” Raven asks, sort of distracted by the landmine whirling around in her mind. She’s got explosives to make.

“Miller,” Jasper says, raising an eyebrow, and then shrugging like he doesn’t care why she doesn’t know his first name.

“I thought Miller was his first name,” Raven shrugs back. “Huh. Well, these muffins are really good.”

“Yup,” Jasper says, sighing slightly. He plops down on a chair near her after standing around awkwardly for a moment. “This place would be really nice if we weren’t being held against our will.”

“Story of our lives,” Raven says dryly, and Jasper laughs.

She smiles triumphantly. The ice Jasper has been surrounding himself with has melted somewhat, and that’s good.

The self-pitying crap was beginning to get on her nerves, and she’s not proud of that impatience. She’s as kind and compassionate as she can manage, but she wasn’t going to let him wallow forever.

She gets it though, she really does.

She wonders if she’s the only one who quite does—a friend responsible for the deaths of so many people, including the person you loved. She knows how it feels to forgive too, and how heavy it feels inside your chest, and how hard it is to accept.

Yeah, she gets that.

She’s never quite put it like that, or talked to Jasper about it in those terms, and she wonders if it would help him if she did.

Maybe, she thinks, when all of this is over.

In the meantime, she doesn’t need to share her innermost feelings and thoughts with their creepy AI warden.

“I have something for you,” Jasper says then, reaching out and handing her a small black bag.

“It’s just a book I’ve had for a while,” he says now, and she knows _that’s_ a lie. “I thought you might like to borrow it now that we have so much free time.”

She doesn’t know what it really is, but it must be good.

“Thank you,” Raven says, smiling slightly. “I’m looking forward to reading it.”

~~

It’s gunpowder.

Yes, she thinks, she definitely wants this.

~~

For several days, she works frantically, but carefully.

She smuggles a small stash of supplies into a bathtub down the hall that’s attached to a room no one uses, and gets to work. Getting into the bathtub naked and without her brace isn’t exactly easy, and getting back out is absolute torture.

“What are you up to?” Kyle asks her. “You seem kind of distracted and distant.”

“I’m just busy,” Raven says, and Kyle lifts an eyebrow.

He knows there’s more, but she’s not about to tell him.

When she knows that she’s right, she’ll tell Bellamy, who she knows will tell Clarke.

She can’t afford for anyone to act suspiciously.

~~

ALIE usually leaves them alone, unless she has something to say, and for that Raven is glad.

ALIE, however, is demanding physicals, and while Raven has no intention of bearing any children for the AI, she’s picking her battles, and so she offers to go first.

ALIE lets them see footage from the drones once a day, to see how the returning group’s journey is going. So far, she’s keeping her word.

Clarke’s checking her over now.

“How’s your leg?” she asks.

“Same as before,” Raven says with a shrug. “Just another thing I have to lug around.”

Clarke nods slightly. “You’re actually pretty healthy, considering,” she says. “A little malnourished, but we all are, and that’ll fix itself soon enough.”

The words are positive, but the tone of Clarke’s voice screams against it. She’s furious that they’re here.

And this is why Raven trusts her to always be on their side, to always come through.

“What happened to you out there?” Raven asks now, quietly.

She hasn’t wanted to intrude, because the dark circles under Clarke’s eyes don’t seem to go away at all with each day, which means she’s still not sleeping well, even with food in her belly and a warm bed.

Raven doesn’t quite blame her, because this place is pretty awful, but still, she should be getting at least a little less . . . willowy. If a particularly strong gust of wind appeared, Clarke’s anger is probably the only thing that would keep her grounded.

“A lot, not much at all,” Clarke shrugs. “Not anything more than what happened before I left,” she says softly, and Raven’s not sure that would even be possible anyway.

“You look tired,” Raven comments, and Clarke looks up at her and smiles weakly.

“I am,” she says. “I saw Lexa again,” Clarke says now, surprising Raven. “I wanted to hate her, and maybe I do, and I wanted to kill her, but—“ She didn’t.

Clarke sighs. If it had been Raven, she’d have killed her. She’d have put her hands around the pretty girl’s throat and squeezed till something snapped.

There’s something on Clarke’s face now, something that seems . . . different. She’d been friends with Lexa, maybe, Raven determines. They’d spent a lot of time together.

The closer you are, the worse the betrayal hurts. That much, Raven knows.

“Lexa and I—“ Clarke starts to say, but then she hesitates.

“Lexa and you what?” Raven asks, but then Clarke makes a helpless sort of gesture with her hands and _oh_.

“I’m sorry,” Raven says now. She is, but a part of her isn’t—Lexa wasn’t trustworthy, and Clarke should have known better.

But then again, their alliance with the grounders had been about a lot more than just rescuing their people from Mt. Weather.

And this is why Raven doesn’t let herself travel down these mental paths. She never quite gets to any solid, real conclusions.

People fall for the wrong people sometimes, and while whatever was between Clarke and Lexa may not have been love, it might have been _something_ , and that hurts.

“It’s weird that the AI wants us to pair up and procreate, right?” Raven asks now. “Like, that’s not just me with some weird idea in my head?”

Clarke shakes her head. “It’s not just you.”

Raven waits while Clarke takes her blood pressure. “We’ve got twice as many penises as vaginas,” she points out, and Clarke is startled into laughing. “The ratio isn’t great.”

“I don’t know how well thought out her plan is,” Clarke says. “I’m just doing what I’m told.”

_For now_ , Raven knows she wants to say.

“Okay, I’m going to take some blood, and then you’re done,” Clarke tells her. “How’s Wick?”

“He’s fine,” Raven says, making a fist.

“Is he bothered by you and Bellamy?” Clarke asks carefully, and Raven realizes she’s trying to set up a precedent in case she needs to pull Bellamy into a shower.

The AI might get suspicious otherwise.

Raven wonders if Clarke knows that she’s actually had sex with Bellamy before, but it’s not like she’d be able to get a good answer out of her now, since she’s playing a part. If Raven were feeling vengeful, she thinks she might mention it at one point, because Clarke and Bellamy are close enough that Raven thinks it would hurt.

But she’s not feeling vengeful, at least not toward Clarke.

“He doesn’t know,” Raven answers now.

“Yikes,” Clarke says. “That could be a problem later.”

“I’ll figure it out one of these days,” Raven says, and that part feels real.  She’s still conflicted about Kyle despite herself.

“Done,” Clarke declares, pressing a band-aid against her small needle mark. It’s funny, because on the Ark that probably wouldn’t have warranted any sort of concern.

“Thanks,” Raven replies, sliding down from where she’s sitting so that she’s standing.

“Have a cookie,” Clarke hands her a full bag of them. “Or ten.”

Well, she could die tomorrow in this place.

She might as well eat all the cookies.

The cookies are as heavenly as the muffins from the first morning, and every other baked good or cooked meal since.

Miller, she thinks, is a godsend.

~~

Kyle tells her that he loves her, and her jaw drops open, and no words come out.

“I love you,” he says again, like maybe she just didn’t hear him the first time.

They’re lying in bed, and spooning, and Raven tries not to make herself stiffen or go rigid, because then he’ll know that she’s awake.

Yeah, she’s not proud of it, but she’s pretending to be asleep.

He says it again now, this time more quietly, like he doesn’t mind that she can’t hear it.

(She wonders if she loves him. Or, she wants to, she wants to wonder, like she’s simply not sure, but the truth is that she isn’t unsure. She doesn’t have to wonder, because she knows. She doesn’t, at least not now.)

She’s stuck in this position for the next two hours, because she doesn’t want to risk moving and breaking the charade, and she can’t sleep until she’s so tired she just passes out. She even lets out a fake snore or too, just to sell it.

~~

Kyle tends to wake up with his pillow over one ear and his other ear pressed against the bed. He really hates her snoring, and it’s not like she can do anything about it.

He tried ear plugs once, but they made him nervous, because he couldn’t hear much of anything.

Raven wakes up and leans on her side, smiling over at him, silly man that he is with a pillow over his head.

She grabs her brace, which she always keeps right next to the bed, and snaps it on as silently and quickly as possible.

She slowly, quietly gets out of bed, pulling a giant shirt over her body and stepping over to the bedroom door.

If ALIE’s watching, which she likely is, then this should really sell it.

She opens the door, and it creaks slightly.

Kyle rolls over then, and his face is awkwardly halfway pressed against his pillow.

Raven places her hand over her mouth. Silly, silly man.

It’s almost funny, she thinks.

She turns back to her goal, and sneaks through the door, shutting it quietly behind her.

She tiptoes through the hallway(as best she can anyway, considering)—past several rooms, mostly filled, because the group had mostly clumped together instead of spreading out too far. It’s easier to get out in a hurry if they’re all close together.

Lincoln and Octavia are on one side of the hallway, and Bellamy’s at the other side—probably to avoid accidentally hearing sex noises, Raven thinks, smothering a laugh—and everyone else except Jaha is in-between. Harper, Miller and Monty are all in the same room, and she imagines that’s a tight fit.

She gets to Bellamy’s room and knocks gently.

He’s holding a giant stick of wood when he opens the door. He’s already shirtless, so Raven intends to make quick work of this.

She raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

Bellamy rubs his eyes sleepily. “I’m tired,” he says gruffly.

“Uh huh,” Raven says, pushing past him. “Did I wake you?”

“Yeah,” Bellamy says. “I wasn’t exactly sleeping well, but I was sleeping,” he sounds wistful, like he’d like nothing better than to crawl back into bed.

Raven’s already wide awake, and completely jazzed.

“Let’s wake you up then,” Raven says, smiling seductively. She feels weird and awkward, but she’s playing a part, she reminds herself.

Bellamy looks completely lost and confused, but then she coughs. “I thought we could take a shower together,” she says. “Get a little early morning shower sex in,” she says, nearly cringing at her own words.

Bellamy’s smirking now, which means he’s finally caught on.

He looks heavily amused, which only makes her want to sock him. It definitely doesn’t make her want to kiss him, which she should probably do.  

She kisses his cheek, because it feels cruel to do anything else.

She’s already getting into the shower naked with him, and that feels like enough.

She grabs his hand and pulls him to the bathroom.

There’s a bathroom between pretty much every room of this house, and they’ve all claimed their own, since there’s enough to go around.

Bellamy’s is immaculate, unlike her own. She and Kyle both messily drop their clothes all over the place. She doesn’t intend to stay, so it’s not like she’s going to worry about dirtying the house.

While she turns on the shower, Bellamy strips.

Raven averts her eyes, choosing only to meet his, and blushes a dark red.

It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before, but it feels decidedly _wrong_.

Bellamy gets inside, and she pulls off her shirt and then her brace, and joins him, pulling the curtain back around them. She sits on the edge of the tub so that she doesn’t have to worry about the strain from keeping herself standing.

Bellamy adjusts the shower nozzles so that they run a little harder(and thus noisier).

“I’ve got explosives,” Raven reveals softly.

Bellamy’s lips curve into a smile. “That’s great.”

“I’ll be ready to go tomorrow,” Raven says. “I need you and Clarke to keep people out of the main hall. I’m going to blow our way out of here.”

Bellamy nods. “Be careful,” he says. “Do you need any other help?”

“No,” Raven says, shaking her head slightly. “I’ve got this.”

She sits there awkwardly for a moment, because she doesn’t have much else to say.

“How long do you think we should stand here?” Bellamy asks then. He reaches out for some shampoo, and starts cleaning his hair.

She rolls her eyes and averts her eyes completely, waiting patiently.

“Hey, I’m not going to have the luxury of taking another shower today. It’ll look suspicious.”

“And we just have to get through one more day,” Raven promises. “Just one more day.” She lets out a long breath. “So—“ Raven says. They’ve had a few brief conversations since they got here, but nothing serious. “Are you okay?”

Bellamy sighs. “As okay as I could be,” he says.

“How is it—“ Raven hesitates. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Clarke,” she says, and that’s not especially unusual, because that’s their wont, but—Raven’s not sure where she’s going with this. She just . . . she worries. “I haven’t asked her, because of ALIE. Is she coming back with us when we get out?”

Bellamy’s silent then. “I think so,” he says, and Raven almost wishes she could see the look on his face, because she’s not entirely sure if he’s lying to her, and she needs to know.

“I hope she does,” Raven says then. “We’re better with her.” Raven wouldn’t tell Clarke that to her face, exactly, but there’s no shame in admitting it to Bellamy, who will keep her confidence.

“Yeah,” Bellamy agrees. “I think she’s better with us too. You should probably wet your hair,” he says then, changing the subject. “You’re not really getting wet enough.”

Raven twists around and gets under the stream of water while Bellamy moves the shower head.

They wait a few more minutes, and then Raven plasters a broad smile on her face and gets out, leaving Bellamy behind.

She grabs a towel, and sits down on the toilet seat. She dries herself off and then puts her brace back on while Bellamy turns off the water and gets out.

She pulls her shirt back on over her head. “I’ll see you later,” she says, still in character. She rubs her towel at her hair a bit more as she walks back to her room.

This will all be over soon, she tells herself.

~~

Raven’s always been fond of Monty, because talking to him doesn’t feel like pulling teeth like it does with some people.

Even when he’s sad, and quiet, he’s still _Monty_. Even if he doesn’t say a word back, you can just sit in a companionable silence with him.

This is what Raven’s doing now, while the two of them try to figure out what’s wrong with one of the areas in the hydroponics lab. The lighting keeps flickering, and even though Raven doesn’t intend to stay beyond the next day, she’s also dedicated to keeping up appearances, and thus this is perfect.

“How are you feeling?” Monty asks her finally.

“I’m fine,” she lies, and he sees right through her.

“I prefer to pretend ALIE’s not even there,” Monty tells her now. “She can keep us here, but she only has as much power as we let her have. I’m going to talk about whatever I want, and her constant watching and occasional commenting  . . . it’s really easy to drown out,” he says, smiling slightly.

He looks alive again, Raven thinks now, like he’s finally finding a way to shoulder his burden and move on. It’s peculiar timing, but sometimes it takes a crisis to put you back together after the fallout from the _last_ crisis.

“Sometimes I like to talk to her though,” Monty reveals. “Ask her questions; see where her head’s at.”

That’s smart. “Huh.” Raven has no interest in talking to ALIE, because it makes her too angry.

 “So, how are you really?” Monty asks gently.

“I’m really tired,” Raven says now, deciding to try it out. “Kyle moves in his sleep.”

Monty smiles sympathetically. “Yikes.”

“Yikes indeed,” Raven says. She hesitates now. “He told me he loves me last night.”

“Wow,” Monty says, and he looks unsure. “Are we celebrating or worrying?” Raven knows that Monty won’t tell Kyle what’s going on in her head, even though they’re friends. Trust is hard for her, but she’s come to the conclusion that trust doesn’t have to be absolute. She knows Monty, and thus knows the kinds of choices he makes, and thus she trusts in his kindness and predictability.

“Worrying,” Raven says. “Celebrating—I don’t know. I pretended to be asleep,” she winces.

Monty nods his head. “I think he’d prefer to tell you again and have you actually respond with how you feel,” Monty says now. “So this is good. Now you have the time to figure it out.”

“Yeah,” Raven’s pleasantly surprised by that way of thinking about it. “I do.”

She’s been struggling to figure out how she feels since before they left Camp Jaha, and she hasn’t gotten closer to any sort of truth. She doesn’t think she loves him, at least not yet, but she’s more concerned with whether or not she _can_.

She knows she’s afraid, and she knows that losing Finn screwed her up, even though she’s forcing herself to move on.

“So, anything new on the Jasper front?” Raven asks now, and Monty shrugs noncommittally, which Raven takes as a no.

It’s easier to try to distract herself than to feel the weight of everything crashing down on her.

~~

Raven and Monty are wandering back through the main hall to get to the other side of the building—there is true friendship in this world, Raven thinks, because everyone had unanimously decided against going up to the second or third floor for bedrooms—when they pass by Kyle, who upon further examination is carrying all of their dirty laundry over to Octavia and Bellamy, who ended up on laundry duty.

Actually, Lincoln had originally been on laundry duty, and Octavia had been on ‘making new clothes’ duty, but apparently Lincoln’s far better at that. Bellamy’s got some other weird duty that he never talks about, and she wonders if he actually does it.

“Do you know where we got this extra towel?” Kyle asks then, after greeting them both.

“Uh,” Raven steels her expression, tries to keep it as blank as possible. “What towel?”

He holds up a blue towel, which came from Bellamy’s bathroom. Kyle had grabbed red towels when ALIE had directed them all toward the linens. Crap.

“No idea,” Raven lies, guilt burning its way through her stomach and up to her mouth, and it’s pure acid.

It’ll all be okay. They’ll get out of this, and there won’t be more secrets, and everything’ll be fine.

Kyle Wick is terrible at hiding his emotions. She’s taken him for a lot of money playing poker that way. He gives away everything, and she can’t risk their freedom so that she can be a little more honest.

“Oh well,” Kyle says, shrugging slightly. “See you later,” he leans in to kiss her cheek, and she tries to ignore the sinking sensation in her stomach.

~~  
He’s yelling at her in the middle of the main hall.

Raven’s not sure how he figured it out, but it’s probably ALIE’s fault or something, or maybe Murphy’s, who saw her on her way back from Bellamy’s room that morning. He’s a big enough asshole just do to it for fun, she thinks.

“If you didn’t want to be with me, you should have just told me,” Kyle says. “You shouldn’t have led me on and _lied_ to me. And then to do this with _Bellamy_ —“ he looks hurt, and Raven just wants to close the distance between them and swear to him that it’s all okay, but now it’s too late.

“You don’t understand,” she says calmly. “It’s—“ Clarke comes up beside her, putting a hand on her arm, and she bites her tongue.

If she could just get him into a shower, she thinks, but there’s no way she’ll manage that now.

“I don’t want to understand,” he says, shaking his head.

“Kyle—“ she calls out, but he turns around and leaves, completely ignoring her.

“You’ll get through to him,” Clarke tells her now. “Just give it time,” Clarke looks deep into her eyes, and tries to communicate the weightiness of the situation to her. Raven doesn’t know if Clarke knows the plan, or if she’s just guessing considering that Kyle had gotten upset over Bellamy.

Raven doesn’t need to be reminded of that, and she wants to scream, but instead she focuses on the here and now.

The hard decisions are the hard decisions for a reason, Raven thinks.

Tomorrow, she’ll explain everything.

~~

He’s gone from their room by the time that she gets there.

Most of his stuff is gone too, but he’d been in a bit of a hurry, so she can still see a few things. She wanders over to the bathroom that they don’t use(the one she takes her ‘baths’ in) and takes off her clothing, crawling inside so that she can finish off her plan.

This is all going to be worth it, she swears.

And if after she’s finished she pulls her knees against her chest and rocks back and forth crying for a moment, that’s okay.

She drains the bathtub water that she’d poured for show and ties up her explosives in their bag, then hangs them from the shower head so that they don’t get wet, like she always does.

It’s been a difficult process, struggling not to get all of the pieces wet, but she’s finally done.

They’re going to be free.

~~

She has a short time frame.

She has to get from the bathroom all the way to the front doors as quickly as possible, without ALIE getting suspicious. It’s only a two and a half minute walk, but a lot can happen in two and a half minutes.

She gives Bellamy the signal to get everyone away from the main hall, and then she heads up, grabs the bombs, and holds them in her bag near her side, hoping ALIE will assume they’re something unimportant.

She heads out of the room, and then down the hallway in this wing of the house, walking quickly, but not running.

No need to draw too much attention to herself.

When she gets to the door, she pulls out a bomb, and the next thing she knows, everything goes a little hazy, and then dark black.

~~

She wakes up, and her ears are ringing, and there’s something heavy on top of her—someone, she realizes, and she screams.

It’s Kyle, why is Kyle on top of her—why—shit, shit, the bomb went off, and—Raven’s desperately trying to make sense of whatever the hell has happened, and now ALIE’s talking, saying something about consequences for their actions, and how _she’s_ the one in control.

If ALIE were a person, Raven would shoot her dead in the face, and she’d sleep better for it.

The body on top of her feels like dead weight, because Kyle was clearly knocked out in the blast, though she doesn’t quite understand how he ended up on top of her, or who actually set off the bombs, which didn’t even make a dent in the security system.

Her heart falls.

At this moment, Raven realizes that they’re truly trapped, because that was the best of what she had to work with, and now it’s gone.

Bellamy and Miller are pulling Kyle off of her, and she sits up to get a good look at him now, and her heart drops into her stomach, and she hears screaming, which must be her, she realizes faintly in the back of her mind.

Some of his skin is burnt, and he’s got a piece of metal sticking out of his side.

Clarke runs over, telling Bellamy and Miller to put him down, to not to risk jostling him. She looks at Bellamy, and a look passes between them, and Raven knows that this is _bad_.

Clarke checks for a pulse, and it’s one of the longest moments of Raven’s life. She sighs with relief and then goes to work on saving his life. Raven’s not sure if he’s going to be okay or not, but Clarke’s trying.

Bellamy kneels down beside her and grabs her hand, but she barely feels it, because her hand is numb. Her entire body feels numb.

She hears screaming again, but maybe it’s just the echoing in her head.

At some point, she goes dark—sees nothing, hears nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't seem like anyone is particularly interested in Raven/Jasper, and while that's a pairing that I'd planned for, it isn't too late for me to rework my story to accommodate that opinion. I don't have a particularly strong emotional attachment to Raven/Jasper, and so if no one is overly attached to the pairing(please tell me if you either are or aren't), then I can adjust my plans, or not(if it seems like anyone is reading this for Raven/Jasper, because I would never want to disappoint anyone). I would like to note, however, that my plans for Raven/Jasper weren't of the 'true epic love' variety to begin with. Anyway! I hope you're still enjoying this story and the weird BSG/It's a Disaster/other random stuff sort of fusion.


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